Like most well-adjusted and popular teenagers, I was a massive fan of The West Wing in high school, to the point where one of my happiest memories of tenth grade is waking up to snow mounting outside my window and realizing that the day’s school cancellation meant I could catch up on Zoey Bartlet’s kidnapping plotline from the show’s fifth season.

More than that, I was one of the many people West Wing -pilled enough to actually pursue a career —or, in my case, an internship—in politics as a direct result of my infatuation with the show. I spent the summer after my freshman year of college in D.C., sharing a dingy Dupont Circle studio apartment with my longtime best friend and reporting for duty at a storied women’s rights organization. Week to week, I was ferried through the Rayburn

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