Live debate on “The West Wing” may shame the real thing

LOS ANGELES — The powers behind “The West Wing” are making this campaign promise: Sunday’s live debate between presidential candidates Arnold Vinick and Matt Santos will be far from politics — or television — as usual.

Laurence O’Donnell, who balances work as a political analyst and a “West Wing” executive producer, said the hourlong episode represents “my wish-fulfillment debate.”

“We are using the accepted liturgy of presidential debates. It will look the same, it will be moderated by Forrest Sawyer, a real news person, it will have all that real feel to it,” O’Donnell said.

“But I think it will be more satisfying in that the candidates end up really going into the issues in a way that they normally would not,” he said. “They end up each forcing the other to get more honest as the debate wears on.”

In other words, Republican Vinick, played by Alan Alda, and Democrat Santos, portrayed by Jimmy Smits, will listen and respond to each other — as opposed to real-world debates that tend to excise substance or spontaneity.

The fictional encounter starts with the usual rules, the kind that “are set up by the candidates and are there to protect the candidates and not promote an informed debate,” said executive producer Alex Graves, who is directing O’Donnell’s script.

But one of the politicians — Graves won’t say who — quickly proposes tossing the book aside. “It ends up … with the candidates doing and saying things you would never expect to see in a debate, never,” Graves said.

Alda and Smits received a crash course in debate strategy and issues that will allow them to veer from the script.

Ratings for “The West Wing” need a jolt. In the first few weeks of the season, and with a move from Wednesday to Sunday, it lost more than 30 percent of its audience (while ABC’s new Oval Office drama “Commander in Chief” jumped into the top 10).

Whether the series “The West Wing” can regroup and return for an eighth year, it’s making this season count. There’s the immediacy of a story line with echoes of the CIA leak case involving communications director Toby Ziegler and space-program secrets. That’s intercut with the lively presidential campaign that could end up with the White House remaining in the hands of the Democratic Party or with a moderate Republican senator from California gaining control.

“The West Wing” featured a debate before, between President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and Republican opponent Robert Ritchie (James Brolin). But that show switched between behind-the-scene machinations and the debate itself. This time the debate episode will offer two 25-minute blocks of uninterrupted drama, most of it focused on the candidates. The actors will perform separate live versions for Eastern and Western time zones

“We’re letting two great actors really go at each other and try to defeat each other for basically an hour, nonstop,” O’Donnell said.

The challenges are “more exciting than daunting,” said Alda, who, like Smits, has worked in live theater.

He likes his character — Vinick “seems unusual in that the positions he takes have some connection to the values he holds,” Alda notes dryly — and is rooting for him. “It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn’t look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy — I mean Jimmy as the character.”

“No, he wants to win,” is the retort from Smits when told of Alda’s remark.

The actors and producers agree there’s significant room for error on a live episode, especially given how infrequently it’s done (an “ER” episode and the recent “Will & Grace” episode among the few examples).

O’Donnell says missteps could prove as rewarding as a flawless hour.

“We could get it completely wrong. You might be able to only hear Alan Alda and not hear Jimmy because the mikes don’t work [or] the camera goes out; some crazy thing happens with the equipment. Certainly, the actors can lose their way.”

“There’s just nothing more fun to watch than that kind of train wreck. If I wasn’t involved with the show I’d be turning it on just to see: OK, how do they screw up,” he said.