“People always ask me if the TV show The West Wing was real; and I always say the set wasn’t really like the West Wing”—the actual West Wing is much less grand, the offices smaller. “But the interesting thing is what the show got right: The people there aren’t cynical. They’re actually trying to do a good job for the country. And they thought they could do it better than the other guys could. John Spencer, the actor who played Leo, the chief of staff, and I became friends—and I always said that to him, you know, these people are not cynical.”
