To be fair, I don’t think fundamental change is what Sorkin thought the goals ought to have been. Not that this is a defense or anything.

In fact Sorkin seems to very much love the status quo. Take his defacement of Sacha Baron Cohen’s charecter in “Trial of the Chicago 7.” In it the radical hippie Abbie Hoffman is questioned by the prosecution, who ask “are you intending to overthrow the government.” (Or something to that affect) and Sacha Baron Cohen [not Hoffman, as this exchange is ahistorical] replies “we overthrow our government every 4 years.”

Arguably the West Wing is the liberal call of duty. In that, the main charecters are often “forced to make hard decisions.” In call of duty this is used to have the main charecters torture people or extrajudicially kill people. In the west wing it’s used to justify the IMF and extra judiciary killing people. In the end neither if these properties argue that anything is wrong with the status quo, and said status quo needs to be protected despite its flaws.