Daily Inspiration Quote by Josh Schwartz

Schwartz’s line is a producer’s shrug dressed up as industry wisdom: you can’t make the thing until the culture and the marketplace give you permission to make the thing. It’s a tautological joke, but it’s also a diagnostic of how “Washington” functions on TV less as a location than as a risk category. The West Wing didn’t just depict D.C.; it laundered politics into aspirational competence at a moment when audiences were ready to believe in process as heroism. That readiness is what Schwartz is really naming.

The clipped phrasing - “Like they said” and the dangling “until you can” - performs insider talk, the kind that assumes a roomful of executives, pilots, and half-remembered development lore. Subtext: people will tell you political drama is impossible right up until a hit proves it’s possible, and then the story changes to “of course it worked.” Success rewrites the rules retroactively; failure is treated as evidence the rules were real.

Contextually, Schwartz is the architect of glossy, youth-forward dramas, not a Beltway chronicler. His point isn’t about ideology; it’s about timing and packaging. The quote sidesteps civic seriousness and centers the mechanics of permission: which narratives get greenlit, which tones (idealism, cynicism, satire) are deemed sellable, which national moods are exploitable. “A show about Washington” becomes a mirror for a broader media truth: institutions are narratable only when audiences are primed to feel something coherent about them - admiration, disgust, nostalgia - and when a network can monetize that feeling without flinching.