Does Matt Santos really have to be fictional?

It's not that these sophisticates are against ideals (they have them themselves), but they know what must be done in order to win. Eggs must be broken to make an omelet, and Santos doesn't seem to have the stomach to break them.

But, watch the camera linger on the nodding faces of ordinary citizens as they listen to Santos's powerful ideas. Watch the gaggle of trailing reporters grow in each New Hampshire town he visits. Watch as he wins the California primary in an upset. In this America, refreshing honesty and fair play are working. Santos is breaking through. We're all rooting for him, at home on our sofas. We assume Santos will do well. There may be twists and turns, but his message will resonate and his honesty will triumph.

But it's a fake. Switch off prime time and we see how incredibly hard it is to persevere as the straight-talking candidate. The Howard Dean presidential campaign collapsed in a scream. Four years earlier, the John McCain "straight talk express" fizzled as sniping between his campaign and that of George W. Bush, fueled by push-polls, reached a climax. The former poster boy of telling it like it is from outside the hallowed halls, Jesse Ventura, is now brought up more in jest than as a role model.

What keeps people in the Village, even in the face of strong temptations to visit the Towns, is a collective nightmare of what might happen if one steps across the border into the forest. The Village is a special place where the prevailing rules - those of the Towns - are in an enforced suspense.

Public life here, in real America, seems more of the venal Towns than of the upright Village. And contrary to "West Wing" parables, those who rise up seem to be the first struck down. Where is the hope? Must we abandon our ideals?

There are small signs of progress. Dean has indeed ridden his plainspoken ethos to power - Democratic party chair is nothing to sneeze at. Senator McCain has recaptured the gloss lost in 2000 so well that he was actually touted as a running mate for Sen. John Kerry in 2004. The authentic voice and story of newly minted Sen. Barak Obama's have placed him on the short list of people who really matter in Washington.

Those of us on our sofas, wishing real life was more like "The West Wing," ought to look around and grab onto these stories. They ought to bring true hope, because they are believable. They tell us that just speaking up isn't enough; we'll need to do the hard work of persevering, too. Improvements won't come about in the space of 60 minutes minus commercials, nor even in the space of one television season. But they will come.

We don't need to move to the Village to hold onto its ideals. We just need to go looking for them here, in the Towns.

• Brad Rourke is a consultant who works on ethics and civic issues.

Page: 1 | 2