White House Tunes In to ‘West Wing’ : Television * President doesn’t watch, but staff wonders how everyone got so good-looking.

So how did “The West Wing” play in the West Wing?

Members of the real White House staff held impromptu house parties in Washington on Wednesday evening to watch NBC’s new political potboiler--and see whether art could improve on nature.

Their verdict: Television’s “West Wing” is bigger, cushier, better-staffed and more civilized than the real thing.

“It made the place look much bigger and more luxurious than it really is,” said presidential press secretary Joe Lockhart. “Who were all those good-looking people walking around with files under their arms?”

The real West Wing is a cramped warren of tiny offices, chronically overcrowded because everyone on the president’s staff fights to get a spot and only a few can squeeze in. NBC’s “West Wing,” from writer Aaron Sorkin (ABC’s “Sports Night” and the film “The American President”) and “ER” producer John Wells, looked and felt more like a well-appointed law firm.

“Everyone was taller, thinner, prettier and more handsome, and everything was more exciting than it is in real life,” said former White House aide Amy Weiss.

But the show’s writers got some things right. “The yelling and screaming certainly reminded me of the White House I work in,” said John Podesta, President Clinton’s chief of staff.

Clinton himself didn’t see the show, in which Martin Sheen plays President Josiah Bartlet, a squeaky-clean idealist from New Hampshire who battles special interests and the religious right. (Viewers who identified themselves as being members of the religious right did, however, and lobbed a few calls to NBC in protest, the network said.)

“[Sheen’s Bartlet] didn’t seem modeled too closely on our guy,” said an aide who begged for anonymity.

During the premiere of “West Wing,” the real president wasn’t even in the West Wing. Instead, Clinton was meeting upstairs in the White House residence with Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell, his nominee to be general chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

“But we’ve got a few tapes floating around,” Lockhart said. “Maybe we should put it in and see what he thinks.”

Although Clinton didn’t watch, an estimated 16.9 million viewers around the country did.

NBC crowed that the premiere attracted the highest ratings for the official premiere of any new series this season: a 14.4 rating and 21 share in the Nielsen overnights.

Some White House staffers tried to match the show’s characters with real-life aides; Bradley Whitford, for example, seems to be playing former political aide George Stephanopoulos (now, confusingly enough, at ABC News).

Others looked in vain for themselves. “Where’s the national security team?” complained deputy national security advisor Jim Steinberg in mock disappointment.

And others kept track of minor details that went wrong--a reference to the president’s “Sunday radio address,” for example, when political junkies know that event is the centerpiece of every good citizen’s Saturday.

Former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers was a consultant to the producers (and her character turned out fine), but she apparently couldn’t catch everything.

Even Republicans joined in.

“There’s seldom that many people in the West Wing,” said Marlin Fitzwater, who was press secretary under President George Bush. “The show gives it a sort of ‘ER’ feel that’s not accurate. But the relationships are pretty good and the characters are good.”

And to some, the climactic moment--when President Bartlet angrily tells a group of religious conservatives to “Get your fat asses out of my office”--seemed stagy.

A real president’s staff would have kept that scene from ever happening, they said.

But Lockhart said he found a deep, redeeming social value in the drama.

“I think it’s actually a potential positive,” he said. “I remember when ‘L.A. Law’ came out, applications to law schools jumped. . . . Right now, popular culture portrays Washington in a very cartoonish, negative way. Here they’re trying to portray these people as serious, well-intentioned and doing work that’s important. I don’t know that people are going to go out [after seeing the show] and say, ‘I want to work at the White House.’ But anything you can do to chip away at the negative image . . . could have a marginally positive effect on America’s young people.”

Really?

“It’s a stretch,” he said with a grin.

Times staff writers Geraldine Baum, Glenn Bunting, Edwin Chen, Faye Fiore and Johanna Neuman contributed to this story.

* “The West Wing” airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.