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The clock was ticking down toward the capital punishment of a human being in this week's West Wing - an episode devoted almost entirely to exploring the range of opinions about the death penalty.

In the opening scene, the Supreme Court denied the appeal of a man on death row. The ruling, which occurred on a Friday evening, meant that the man was scheduled to die the following Monday morning at 12:01 a.m. After learning of the Court's decision, some of the West Wing staff, led by Sam -- the Deputy Assistant to the President for Communications -- spent the weekend vainly trying to convince the President to exercise his authority to commute a federal death penalty. Other members of the staff expressed various representative opinions about the death penalty, from C.J.'s ambivalence to Charlie's unflinching support. The death penalty drama was intertwined with a subplot about a campaign manger for a Democratic candidate for Congress, who came to Washington to vent her anger at the White House for its role in causing the Democratic National Committee to cut funding for her candidate.

These two stories highlight a recurring problem with The West Wing: by condensing the very large and very complex executive branch of government into the roles played in that government by five or so main characters, the show gives a distorted impression of the way the executive branch really works. The power of government is simply not as concentrated in the real West Wing as it is in the show. Both of this week's stories were unbelievable and unrealistic, because it is very unlikely that real senior White House staff would ever be so heavily or intimately involved in either issue - the death penalty or campaign funding -- as they were in the show.

As Toby, the Assistant to the President for Communications, pointed out to his Rabbi, who was trying to have him convince the President to commute Cruz's sentence, White House staff are not supposed to influence policy. The staff's real role is more administrative than substantive. While the President might be interested in his or her staff's opinions on the death penalty or other social issues, it is more likely that he or she would seek advice from the Cabinet, or from any of the many panels and commissions of experts appointed by the President or Congress to formulate policy. It is simply implausible that White House staff would spend an entire weekend working as hard as Sam and Toby did to convince the President to commute a death sentence. It is more likely that they would spend the entire weekend working very hard to stage an event like an arrival ceremony for a visiting foreign head of state, or to compile information from policy makers in preparation for a presidential speech or decision.

The story about the angry campaign manager, who expressed her rage during a caustic meeting with Josh -- the White House Deputy Chief of Staff -- in Josh's West Wing office, was actually more disturbing than unbelievable. Although the White House is occupied by members of a certain political party, it is not a political party headquarters. The President of the United States is president of the entire population, and not just that part of the population that voted for him or her. As a result, the tax payer dollars that fund White House operations, including the salaries of the President and the White House staff, are never supposed to be spent on purely politically activities such as fundraising. Those activities are supposed to be financed by the President's political party.

The controversy over President Clinton's White House coffees, as well as the fundraising computer database created by his staff, are recent real-life examples of the problems that can arise when these lines get blurred. Such purely political functions should have been funded by political organizations like the Democratic National Committee, and should have taken place on private property. Members of the White House staff should not, and generally do not, spend their time deciding whether or not a certain candidate should receive campaign funding. It is much more likely that a scene like the one between Josh and the campaign manager would take place at the headquarters of the National Democratic Congressional Committee, and would involve staff from that committee, rather than White House staff.

On a final note, the last scene of the episode -- in which the President, who is Catholic, kneels on the floor of the Oval Office with his rosary beads and gives his confession to his priest -- raised some interesting questions about the separation of church and state. If school children are prohibited by law from praying in the public spaces that are their classrooms, should a president be allowed to perform deeply involved religious rituals in the Oval Office?

I suppose we should be relieved that such rituals have evolved to the point that real blood or small animals are no longer required. Those ancient Athenians had a way of messing up their public spaces . . . .)

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