Great loss for once-shining, troubled "West Wing"

John Spencer's Leo McGarry wasn't the star of NBC's "The West Wing."

He was more than that.

He was the show's connective tissue, the man who linked the president to everyone else and who, as the president's chief of staff, had to figure out where good ideas and hard, cold political reality could intersect.

Because "West Wing" at its best explored precisely that idea — politics as the art of the possible — Leo seemed in many ways its most irreplaceable character.

Now, with John Spencer's tragic death last week at age 58, we'll find out — and find out at a time when "West Wing" has dropped so far from its ratings heyday that it was already considered a long shot for renewal beyond this season.

Personally, I still like "West Wing." I'm willing to tolerate its missteps, like the terrible idea of a live debate between presidential candidates Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda, because it still does a number of things well.

But if the show was facing third-and-13 before, the loss of Leo moves that back to third-and-20.

"The West Wing" worked from the beginning because it illustrated how power works.

Because Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlet has a country to run, he cannot be friends with those who work for him. When Jed played chess with Richard Schiff's Toby Ziegler, they were separated by a gap the size of Greenland — because Toby understood exactly who the president is.

So Jed had Leo, and while Leo, too, respected Jed's position, he was grandfathered in as a personal friend. Jed could chat with Leo and Leo could relay his messages and directives to the staff, whose subsequent efforts to implement them created the core of the show.

Looking over the current cast, there's no other Leo in sight.

Bradley Whitford's Josh Lyman might get there someday, but he's still got mistakes to make. He also still has to have that affair with Janel Moloney's Donna, who's been drooling all over him for six years.

Allison Janney's C.J. Cregg, while likable enough, was already tossed into water way over her character's head when she got named to Leo's old chief of staff position.

The idea that any press secretary could step right into high-level international policy decisions is the kind of credibility-sapping move that explains why "West Wing" viewership has dropped by half from the better years.

Spencer's death may not leave the same kind of hole in "West Wing" that John Ritter's death left in "8 Simple Rules," or Freddie Prinze's in "Chico and the Man." But it may be just as hard to fill.

When your challenge is to illustrate the art of the possible, John Spencer made Leo McGarry into exactly the guy you wanted holding the brush.