Post

Because of the inner logic of the show, The West Wing had to simultaneously reference historical presidents while creating a 'new canon' for the previous few presidents before Bartlett AND have elections take place in the wrong years in order to line up with when they premiered the series

which means that at some point in The West Wing Universe, Congress ratified a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT that would change when elections happened while also not having a reason to do so SO MONUMENTAL that it would radically alter the trajectory of the nation

I believe the fan explanation for it is that Nixon resigned in between Agnew's resignation and Ford's appointment in the timeline, and they changed the law to do a special presidential election in 1974 (which does fit with which presidents get cited), then just kept the 4-year cycle

(Though one would think this would've been mentioned during the multi-episode "25th Amendment with a VP vacancy" storyline)

Another example of "West Wing is a very good workplace sitcom/drama and a not very good show about politics"

Listening to The West Wing Weekly and Hrishi/Josh very quickly slamming into the reality that was "this show had really awful centrist political viewpoints" was such a wild experience, especially when i was as big a fan of the show as they were

The thing is that I'm not really convinced Sorkin was the biggest issue there (though it is often for the race/gender-related lack of progressiveness), the show noticeably got much more centrist after he left!