If the results of some informal polling I conducted over the past few weeks are a decent barometer of Brandeis' political leanings, then a sad day for many students is approaching.My poll was a quirky one, but elicited some very interesting responses. I began by asking people to name their favorite U.S. president. This is Brandeis, of course, so the results were heavily tilted toward the liberal favorites: Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, with a few votes each for Kennedy and Clinton. Not surprising, really. But then I asked people the question a second time, allowing them to name, if they wanted, a fictional president.

Nearly everyone ended up favoring a made-up president rather than one of the 43 we've had in real life. A few people cast their votes for the alien-fighting Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman in Independence Day) or the hapless Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove).

The overwhelming choice was the president who is currently in his final weeks in office: Josiah Bartlet. Of course, this is really The West Wing's Martin Sheen, but with President Bartlet's second term (and the television show it embodies) coming to an end in May, I've been thinking about our contemporary situation.

Why do so many love Bartlet? The West Wing has always been a bit of a liberal fantasyland. When the show premiered in 1999, Bartlet was instantly better than real-life President Clinton. And when President Bush took office, the fantasy only grew. While 9/11 never happened on The West Wing, the Bartlet administration has weathered crisis after crisis for seven years. In Bartlet's America, terrorists are caught and social policies aren't sold to the highest bidder. College tuition is tax-deductible, and the president cooperates with, rather than impedes, investigations into his non-disclosure of a medical condition.

The show was formally cancelled this month, but preparations for its end started last year with the introduction of potential successors: a young and eager Democratic congressman played by Jimmy Smits and a senior Republican senator with John McCain-like qualities played by Alan Alda. Both have merits, but neither would live up to their predecessor.

But preempting a potential Hawkeye administration, ABC served up another fictional president last fall with its freshman show Commander in Chief. In this show, Geena Davis' character Mackenzie Allen is elevated from the vice-presidency by virtue of the president's sudden death. "Hooray," the ABC promotions told viewers to shout at the prospect of not only a female president, but one who is independent of party to boot.

Commander in Chief, to be short, is a horrid program, wholly bereft of the nuance and elegance of The West Wing. What bothers me is not the many burdensome scenes of President Allen's live-in (yes, at the White House) mother, husband and three children (one of whom will undoubtedly be kidnapped when Commander in Chief plagiarizes one of The West Wing's more famous plots) dealing with the ramifications of her presidency on her social life.

No, what troubles me about Commander in Chief is that it is an awful show about an awful president. Allen understands very little about presidential power. In an early episode, she attempted to pardon a death-row inmate about to be executed in Texas, clearly an error by the show's writers. Were it a real scenario, Allen's actions would have been a flagrant abuse of the scope of the Oval Office. More recently, the Allen administration has been making decisions so dangerous that they seem like one of Dick Cheney's nightmares. In a recent two-episode arc about a damaged U.S. submarine off the coast of North Korea, a repeatedly botched rescue mission succeeds only after Allen promises to give the North Korean government $500 million as well as a public apology for the espionage. I shudder to think what she might do if North Korea launched a nuclear missile.

Bartlet, meanwhile, recently averted a nuclear meltdown in California without letting his bureaucracy spin out of hand into a Katrina-like disaster.

Is Commander in Chief supposed to be a subtle hint at a possible Hillary Clinton presidency? If so, the show's producers are doing a great disservice to the junior senator from New York. However, my conclusion from this program is not that any woman is incapable of being president, but that Geena Davis most certainly is.

The two presidents remaining-one real and one fictional-after Jed Bartlet leaves office May 14 are unfortunate alternatives. Those of us lamenting the end of the Bartlet administration may be trapped in a liberal fantasyland, but at least it's worth our real-life aspirations.