The thing with 'The West Wing' is that the fantasy was legitimately better than the reality - these were smarter, better people than their real-life counterparts, working together at a better White House than the one we had.

I vividly remember my first day on the White House staff. My office, of course, was in the Old Executive Office Building. I didn't rate one in the West Wing; but don't try to tell me or any of the rest of us working there that we weren't working in the White House.

That's the great thing about 'The West Wing:' you really felt like you were in the thick of it.

Every year, the White House Correspondents' Dinner inspires two competing varieties of coverage: celebrity-obsessed fawning and angry tirades about how it represents everything twisted about our broken democracy. It doesn't, really.

Oh, my only - if I had one frustration in being on 'West Wing' is I wasn't on it enough, because I was in and out.

I knew with The West Wing that that wasn't going to be for very long, that I was just the red herring.