Lawrence O’Donnell Suggests Bush Should Learn From “The West Wing”

December 10th, 2005 2:35 PM

At the Huffington Post yesterday, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell stated that President Bush, who is rumored to watch reruns of the television program O’Donnell is the executive producer for, should be watching recent episodes of NBC's “The West Wing” to learn how to deal with problems in his own administration:

“In episode four this season, Toby confessed to the chief of staff that he did it. In episode five, Toby offered his letter of resignation to the president, who refused to accept it and fired Toby on the spot. Toby marched out of the White House on his way to being indicted. By flipping over to ‘The West Wing’ after ‘60 Minutes,’ Bush could have learned that the right thing for West Wing staffers to do is quit/get fired before getting indicted -- that the violation of the president's trust and the public trust is more than enough reason to leave the White House. That is something Karl Rove is never going to tell him.”

One has to wonder if O’Donnell knows the difference between reality and television anymore.

Alas, even though he claims to not receive any royalties from DVD sales, O’Donnell used his blog post as a shameless advertisement for them:

“‘West Wing’ DVD sets are always a good Christmas present (which is why we release the new sets in December), and they seem particularly welcome in the real White House this year, so if you're wondering what to get the man who has everything, get him a fresh set of season five for Air Force One.”

That’s certainly what I was thinking of getting the president this year.