The White House is holding its third annual “Big Block of Cheese Day,” to gin up attention for President Obama’s final State of the Union address. The phrase is a reference to a West Wing episode in which the fictional President Bartlett’s chief of staff invites all manner of wacky American civil-society groups to meet with White House senior staff — people who want the government to track UFOs, cartographers concerned that public-school children are using Eurocentric and racist maps, animal-rights activists who want to build highways for newts, turtles, and salamanders. You know, the sort of people who wouldn’t normally have access to the corridors of power.
The “cheese” reference is to President Andrew Jackson’s placing a 1,400-pound block of cheese in the foyer of the White House in 1837, so that any citizen doing business there could cut himself a slice of gruyère (I don’t actually know what type of cheese it was, it could have been feta). The point being that the White House is the People’s House — the president of the United States being simply a temporary resident, a citizen executive.
Here’s a White House produced video (beware the cheese puns) explaining the whole thing complete with cameos from some of the original cast looking a little worse for the wear.
The West Wing was great TV — Aaron Sorkin is a compelling writer for screens big and small — but it’s not actually a realistic model for governing. For years, conservatives have been pointing out that President Obama seems to think his job description is that of The West Wing’s President Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen. Throughout the show’s seven seasons, Bartlett gives many fine set-piece speeches — and not always in front of Congress or audiences — but often in intimate settings with his senior aides. He talks and talks and quips and quips, and it’s all very witty and well-made and excellent TV. But it’s not really all that much like what governing looks like.
In the show, when the principled liberal president has a dispute with those nasty Republicans in Congress — he sends an aide to a private meeting to roast them over the coals of righteous oratory. Then President Bartlett gives a speech declaring his policy intentions — universal pre-K, or more nutritious school lunches, or the end to some foreign despot’s military aggression, or what have you — and it gets done. The Democrats always have the votes in Congress, the Republicans cave and slink away, the foreign dictator submits to the brilliance of American “smart power,” and the episode ends and everyone goes on their merry way until next week.
The real world is not like that. Despite his reputation as a campaigner, Obama’s speeches don’t seem to move anyone much. In truth, the greatest orator in America can’t get anyone to give a damn, let alone actually persuade anyone to change their mind.
I don’t really care that the White House wants to put on a silly “Big Block of Cheese Day.” I do care, though, that after seven long years of failure, this president and his White House still seem to believe that a West Wing style of governing works.