MovieChat Forums > The West Wing (1999) Discussion > Season 7 Presidental Race

Season 7 Presidental Race


I love Alan Alda's character of Arnold Vinnick and I honestly was rooting for him. BUt whenever I watch Season 7 i just groan watching how much the show stretches in order to make Santos seem like a credible threat.

An example is in the second episode, where they talk about Santos and his service. The fact hes consistently skipped his air force training in order to Campaign, then he does his training anyway and gets a huge boost in the polls.

First, would it really give him that big a boost?

second: are you telling me that not a single reporter wanted to do a story about his history in the service and found out he constantly skipped training?

third: wouldn't the news that he had constantly skipped training before to campaign but had done it this time tanked him if it had come out?

But the thing that REALLY upsets me and makes me roll my eyes every time i think about it, was the fact that show had to script a nuclear meltdown at a facility in Vinnick's home state that he himself had heavily lobbied for. That kind of coincidence has "Sabotage" written all over it to me.

I think what happened was that they built Vinnick up so much, and waited so long to build up Santos, they had no realistic way of making it even.

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They spend a lot of time on campaigns and such, but the reality is that all that campaign stuff, who they pick for the VP and all of that doesn't actually matter. The election is always a referendum on the previous president. In this case people were mostly happy with Bartlett so they were happy to continue with the Democrats. If they hadn't been, they would have gone with Vinick.

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