In an effort to show they really are ready to negotiate the issues behind the government shutdown – so long as those discussions included delaying the Affordable Care Act – House Republicans staged a photo op yesterday in which their leadership sat at an empty negotiating table, waiting for President Obama to show up.

It all seemed so familiar, and not because it called to mind Clint Eastwood's infamous "empty chair" speech during last year's Republican National Convention. Then I remembered where I'd seen it before: An episode of The West Wing called "Shutdown" that first aired in 2003.

For those who had tuned out by then because creator Aaron Sorkin bailed out the year before, you missed a dramatic recreation of the showdown that shut down the federal government in 1995. But given the recent behavior in Washington, it is becoming increasingly clear that many of today's politicians were still avid viewers of the show at the time.

The shutdown in that episode comes after President Josiah Bartlet 1 rejects the 3 percent reduction in the federal budget proposed by the bold new hope of the GOP, Speaker Jeff Haffley – a role Sen. Ted Cruz seems to have studied closely to achieve his combination of overwhelming confidence and refusal to heed others' advice. Haffley makes the proposal at the last possible minute, scuttling the deal he'd already agreed to, proving he'd rather shut down the government to please his base and prove his point. Bartlet surprises everyone in the room by calling his bluff and bringing the government to a halt.

Sounds familiar, right?

What follows is a protracted game of chicken, with Republican lawmakers and President Bartlet refusing to negotiate. Well, that's not entirely true. Each side is perfectly happy to accept the others' surrender. As the shutdown drags on over the weeks, Bartlet's staff pressures him to agree to the GOP's demands for the good of the country. The President – at this point in the season's overall story arc, still spooked by the absence of his wife and aftermath of a disagreement with deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman – refuses to concede any ground.

Eventually, with the backing of his wife and Lyman, the president agrees to meet with Republican lawmakers, who have been staging photo ops not unlike what we saw in the real world yesterday. In a bit of showmanship, the President and his staff walk to Capitol Hill, where grandstanding Republican leaders keep him waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more. Bartlet, who whiles away the time sitting on a bench, eventually walks way, telling reporters Republican leaders clearly don't want to talk. With that, public perception shifts in Bartlet's favor. He uses that leverage to get exactly what he wanted all along, final proof that his Executive Mojo had returned.

If Republicans in Washington – the real Washington, not the fictional one – had hoped for a public response that mirrored the one their fictional counterparts enjoyed in "Shutdown," they've been disappointed so far. Haffley and the Congressional Republicans of The West Wing managed to blame the shutdown on Bartlet's refusal to negotiate – something real Republicans have attempted to do, going to far as to write USA Today op-eds to push their point home and to pressure President Obama to accede to their demands.

Out here in the real world, though, public opinion is firmly against the Republicans, and the GOP is falling prey to the in-fighting and self-doubt that plagued the Democrats of The West Wing. Voters may not be entirely behind President Obama or the Affordable Care Act (even if it turns out many of them don't really know what the Affordable Care Act is), but it's nowhere near the outrage seen in "Shutdown."

Of course, just as the real-life shutdown standoff of 1995 ultimately was "won" by President Clinton – his poll numbers reached their highest level to that point – so too did The West Wing shutdown wind up going the president's way, thanks in large part to an increasingly cocky, tone-deaf Republican leadership so enamored with the self-made mythology that they're the only ones standing up to the government that it can't see the olive branch being waved in their faces.

If there are lessons politicians could learn from "Shutdown," they revolve around the standing on principle and doing things for the right reason. Bartlet might "win" the argument in the episode, but only after he stops being obstinate, withdrawn and self-pitying and starts engaging in the topic at hand. Similarly, Republicans lose the upper hand when they go beyond demands based upon principle to wanting to publicly humiliate the president to make a point.

Such devotion to the idea of fair play politics and honor amongst politicians isn't exactly rare on The West Wing – the show was, at times, not so much a political drama as an idealized vision of how politics should work – and it's perhaps unlikely that we'll see real world events unfold so neatly as they did on TV (even if it would be great to see Obama walk along the Mall to Capitol Hill). But it is quite possible we'll see Speaker John Boehner undone by his own hubris, just as Haffley was.

That "Shutdown" so cannily predicted today's political events shouldn't be surprising; this isn't the first time the long-running NBC political drama anticipated real-world politics. The show's derided seventh season in 2005 featured a presidential election between a Democratic nominee of color and an occasionally ill-tempered moderate Republican pushed to the right by his party's base.

Time will tell whether the current government shutdown will play out like The West Wing version of events. But Boehner might want to start Netflixing episodes of the series to see how thing turn out. (Spoiler: Not very well for the Republicans. Considering that the main characters are Democrats, it's just that kind of show).

1 UPDATED 12:33 p.m. Eastern, 10/03/13: An earlier version of this story misspelled President Josiah Bartlet's name.