Which Way for "West Wing"?

There's one man who perhaps best understands the predicament faced by the writers of The West Wing in the wake of actor John Spencer's death. Unfortunately, President Taft is unavailable for consultation.

Back in 1912, Taft's running mate, Vice President James Sherman, died six days before Election Day.

NBC's The West Wing is in similar straits--caught between mourning the loss of a colleague, and mounting a presidential race of its own.

"It's going to be hard to cover this up [the loss of Spencer]," says political blogger Ron Gunzburger of Politics1.com. "It's not like an actor getting pregnant."

Indeed, there's no potted plant big enough to mask the space left by Spencer, who died of a heart attack Friday at the age of 58. The 2002 Emmy winner was an original cast member of the Oval Office drama, his character, Leo McGarry, having risen from indispensable chief of staff to indispensable vice presidential candidate.

Although West Wing's declining approval ratings--it's averaging just 8.2 million viewers this fall on Sunday nights--make an eighth season seem unlikely, the show isn't going down meekly. Its seventh season has been devoted to the question of who will replace Martin Sheen's termed-out President Barlet: Jimmy Smits' Congressman Santos or Alan Alda's Senator Vinick. Spencer's McGarry is on the Santos Democratic ticket.

Now on hiatus, West Wing was scheduled to return Jan. 8 with an already completed episode featuring McGarry and Governor Sullivan (Brett Cullen), his Republican counterpart, gearing up for a V.P. debate.

Slightly more than half of the season's 22 shows are in the can, leaving producers and writers only about eight episodes to tie up their presidential election--and acknowledge or deny the death of Spencer.

If the show chooses to deny Spencer's death, for short-term storyline purposes, it could go The Sopranos route which, as pointed out in Monday's Hollywood Reporter, could entail using body doubles, special effects and dialogue snippets to make it seem as if McGarry were still around, à la Soprano family matriarch Livia, who lived on even after her portrayer, Nancy Marchand, passed on. Or it could simply go the daytime soap route and recast.

If the show chooses to acknowledge Spencer's death, it could go the way of Cheers, Dallas, 8 Simple Rules..., or any other series that killed off a character because of an actor's passing. Even The Sopranos went there eventually.

At least West Wing writers aren't boxed in by a tease in the seventh season premiere in which Barlet, now the former leader of the free world, mixes with members of his former staff at the dedication of his presidential library. The scene, set three years in the future, aka three years after the Santos-Vinick election, did not feature Spencer's McGarry.

According to NBC, the show is currently on its holiday break. No meetings on its direction, post-Spencer, are likely to be held before production resumes Jan. 2.

Although political junkie Gunzburger hasn't watched The West Wing much since creator Aaron Sorkin stopped cranking out episodes, he has a hunch as to where the show's headed: "My guess is they do an episode real quickly where they get a call."

A bad one. A hospital stay, and an off-screen death for the previously heart attack-stricken McGarry will ensue, Gunzburger predicted.

Things didn't end happily for Taft campaign, either.

Outpouring of sympathy or no for the deceased Sherman, Taft's Republican ticket finished a dismal third behind third-party maverick Theodore Roosevelt and Democratic victor Woodrow Wilson.

Politics, like showbiz, can be harsh.