Verbal jousting, argumentative parrying, intellectual tete-a-tete and some clever and witty repartee. All part of daily life in fictional president Jed Bartlet’s White House.

The West Wing ran for 7 seasons on NBC and was a phenomenally successful show, blitzing the Emmy and Golden Globe awards in its early years and leaving a generation of Bush-fatigued viewers wishing on a prayer that Martin Sheen would run for office.

Creator (and writer for the first 4 seasons) Aaron Sorkin has made liberal intelligentsia his signature, his follow-up “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” providing it in concentrated form for the one season it was around. Sorkin’s characters are all exceptionally smart in their own way. Some certified and some not. The main characters on The West Wing can boast:

• A degree in Communications
• A plethora of law degrees
• Nobel Prize in Economics
• Medical degree
• Recognition as a specialist thoracic surgeon
• Editorship of Harvard Law Review
• Decades of experience as political operatives on local, state and federal elections
• PR contracts with Hollywood movie studios
• Partnership in major law firm
• Cabinet membership
• Executive at munitions manufacturers…

And that’s just the book smarts. The crew are all champions of various social causes and leap to the defence of all that is good, challenging men & women who are supposedly senior and supposedly of divine wisdom. They make an artform out of getting the right things done, for the right reasons. Sure, there is plenty of compromise along the way in order to effect their agenda, but at the end of the day their work makes a difference and they challenge anyone who gets in their way or isn’t up to speed.

Those who cop the worst are those who could be said to be ‘less intelligent and competent’, the bumblers and the wannabes. Each pretender is slayed and flayed and held up as a buffoon.

So how does all this make me an asshole?

Confession time: I too dislike idiots.

I share the pain of our West Wing friends. I was so inspired by these people that I began to expand on the traits of theirs that I have: I started asking more questions, challenging my superiors and asking for good reasons when bad decisions were made. Over the past few years I’ve lost most of my inhibitions about those who are ’superiors’ in the workplace. As far as I’m concerned, if they have more responsibility and decision-making power, then they should also be smarter and more considered than those of us who work for them. Is it too much to demand that those in positions of leadership be both intelligent and competent? I don’t think so.

So I ask questions now even when I know people don’t want to hear them. I challenge decisions if I think they’re bad, or made for the wrong reasons. I don’t mind going on the record and calling something out as being shit, if it clearly is.

The moment I realised all of this was turning me into an asshole was fairly recently. A bunch of us were coming out of a meeting where I’d posed some questions about a direction something was being steered in. I ended up being the only one asking any questions and the rest of the room – bar my sparring partner – was fairly quiet. I could tell I had the room on my side but no one was backing me up. As the meeting broke up (with my contention defeated based on hierarchy, not common sense) a colleague whispered in my ear, “I agree with you, well done for saying it”. I looked at them in disgust and said, “Say it in there, or don’t say it at all. Your support is useless to me in the corridor”. And I walked ahead and left them in my dust.

I needed some air and so walked down the road for a coffee and a ponder. As I sat there and rued the scorched mouth I now had, I realised I’d made it harder for me to count on that person’s support in the future. Even though I was right about their spineless meeting behaviour, my curt retort I would start one person down next time. Stupid, but that’s how it is.

There’s a line in one West Wing episode where Josh and Toby are talking about Bartlet’s campaign strategy against the Bush-like Governor Ritchie, a bit of a simple man. Josh says to Toby, “Your problem is you want to beat him, but I just want to win. You want to beat him and that’s a problem for me”.

At the time I couldn’t see the distinction, but essentially Josh is pointing out Toby’s desire to prove himself smarter than Ritchie, whereas Josh isn’t fussed about smart so much as winning – and if pretending to be less smart makes it easier to win, he’s ok with that. Toby isn’t, and there’s your difference.

I realised the other day that I’m Toby – all about beating someone and being right, but less about the result. That doesn’t really suit someone whose job is to sell a message – being smarter and right doesn’t always beat dumb and wrong, just look at the success of Sunrise…

Not sure what needs to give here – do I make an effort to chill a bit, or is my quest for right and good my calling card? I have no idea and will probably just make it up as I go.

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