After leaving the Obama administration in 2011, Jen Psaki went to work in the private sector but was inspired to get back into politics the following year. Thanks to that watershed moment in her life, she is now the mouthpiece of the Biden administration.
And what was it that sent her back into politics? Binge-watching the old NBC political drama The West Wing.
“I’m working at this consulting firm and I started watching ‘The West Wing.’ And I don’t know what prompted me to watch it, but I binged the entire thing,” Psaki told actor Rob Lowe on his podcast.
“In a crazy way, [the show] really brought me back to come back to politics and I ended up coming back and doing the 2012 campaign, and traveling with then-President Obama on his reelection.”
“So I was basically gone for like six months, and then I thought to myself, ‘I’ve got to go back. I’ve got to go back.'”
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Psaki jokingly blamed Lowe, a star of the series, for putting her in the position of being grilled by Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy.
“That character was so inspiring because that idealism that Sam Seaborn had, that you embodied for many years, is kind of what the best of Washington is,” Psaki said.
“I never thought I’d be back in the White House,” she continued. “And now I get to work with all of these people who are a part of the press team, or earlier in their career than I am — in their 20s or early 30s — who have that idealism that is like bursting out of their pores, that makes you want to be here every day.”
It actually makes perfect sense that a fictional and somewhat romanticized political drama would have made Psaki circle back to politics. The West Wing, which was about the lives and work of staffers of fictional Democrat President Jed Bartlett, ran from 1999 to 2006 — mostly during the Bush administration. It certainly felt, at the time the show was popular, that many liberals watched it for some escapism. Democrats did the same thing during the Trump years.
Given how terrible Psaki is at being a White House press secretary, it’s hardly surprising that a twenty-year-old television series inspired her to return to politics. I wonder what made her decide to join the Biden administration — reruns of The Jerry Springer Show?
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