That assumption, in its historical moment, was at once radical and fitting. The West Wing premiered just at the moment when American media were being shaken out of their earlier habits. The show was grappling with the ascendancy of cable news (CNN had been founded in 1980; Fox News and MSNBC had made their debuts in 1996). It was reckoning with the emerging demands of digital news. (Remember Lemon-Lyman.com?) The show cared deeply, in its way, about the consequences of the shifts that were taking place around it—about the transformations to come in the new millennium and the new ways Americans would have to learn about themselves and their place in the world.

And the show did much of that caring through C.J. Through her, in particular—through her concern about being honest with the news reporters who double as her colleagues; through the stands she takes in arguing for the principles she believes in—the show posits a world whose messy truths can be made sense of. That is part of its gauzy illusion. C.J. may be sarcastic; she may be, every once in a while, cynical; but she believes, at her core, in the power of shared facts, of shared information, of the common story. “We have an enormous pulpit,” she reminds President Bartlet, when he wants to shelve a report attesting to the power of sex-education classes in schools. And then: “Mr. President? We can all be better teachers.” During a military showdown between India and Pakistan, she reminds her assistant: “In the next few weeks it’s going to be important for the president to reassure Americans and the world that he has a firm grip on the crisis and is working hard to defuse it.”

The show’s paternalism is there in those comments. But so is its earnestness. Here is C.J., living in the pre-post-truth world. Here she is, caring about facts and their consequences. In West Wing–focused shows that would come after The West Wing itself—among them House of Cards and Veep—press secretaries are often dismissed either as duplicitous or simply as dupes. They are belittled in ways that call to mind the current presidential administration’s attitude toward an independent press. C.J., though, was her show’s moral center. And the news itself, similarly, isn’t an enemy or a mockery in The West Wing; it is an environment that encompasses—that implicates—everyone. It is a schedule. It is a shared reality. “Let’s show the two minutes before and after what we see on CNN,” The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin described the show’s premise recently. It’s a small promise, in a show that made melodrama of democratic norms; it is also part of the fantasy the show was selling.

The West Wing played out in episodes, organizing its action around a few intersecting storylines; the news once did that, too. The “news story” was its own kind of illusion. It was always too easy. It was never enough. But it pretended to be. “That’s a full lid, everyone,” C.J. Cregg said, and for a while that was supposed to mean something.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.