"he pandered on the death penalty"

TV Former West Wing writer and producer Lawrence O’Donnell assesses Bartlett's record:

"O’Donnell’s pessimism was at its apex when he discussed his process behind writing this scene. “When I proposed a death penalty episode…the backstory that I wrote in my head for this president is that he pandered on the death penalty, just like every Democrat who doesn’t believe in it, in order to get elected president. And he was from a state where he never had to use the death penalty anyway.”

The comments beneath are relatively coherent too and offer an good outsider perspective.  As one of them notes, Obama's big problem has been his inability to communicate what successes he has had with the epic rhetoric we heard in 2008, that we're desperate for him to sound like Bartlett.

But it's also important to look at Bartlett's fictional presidency in the context of the change in producer five (?) years in to his presidency, a producer who was hell bent on balancing the portrayal of Republicans and decreasing Bartlett's effectiveness.  Hello, Season Five.