Josiah Edward "Jed" Bartlet is a fictional character from the American television serial drama The West Wing created by Aaron Sorkin and portrayed by actor Martin Sheen.

His origin as a recurring character evolved due to Sheen's acting finesse; Sorkin and fellow West Wing writers shaped Bartlet's role within the show accordingly.

The remainder of the series fleshes out the details of Bartlet's administration, including friction between his policies and those of the Republican-dominated Congress, his tribulations with multiple sclerosis, his reelection, and the campaign of his successor, Matt Santos.

[3] Sheen described the character as being drawn largely from Bill Clinton: "He's bright, astute, and filled with all the negative foibles that make him very human," he told Radio Times.

Sorkin said he took some of Bartlet's characteristics from his own father, namely his "great love of education and literature [and] all things old," his "[belief] in a genuine goodness in people," and his "'Aw, Dad' sense of humor.

According to Sorkin, this was not planned; the plot came about because he wanted to write an episode in which the president was in bed watching a soap opera and the audience discovered that the first lady was a physician.

[5] Sorkin has stated that Bartlet's father, "obviously convinced he married some Catholic whore, treats his son terribly for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that he adopted his mother's religion."

[7] He was accepted to Williams, Harvard, and Yale, but instead chose to go to the University of Notre Dame, as he was considering becoming a priest, though decided against it after meeting Abbey, his future wife.

A recurring motif throughout the series is Bartlet's inability to remember the names of junior staffers, a trait taken directly from Sheen's own memory tendencies.

Bartlet's accomplishments as president include appointing the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice and first female Chief Justice, negotiating a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine, creating millions of new jobs, providing strong support for alternative energy, and orchestrating a Social Security reform plan (although it is never made clear whether the plan is passed by the United States Congress, the show indicates that a revolutionary agreement is achieved with bi-partisan support).

Bartlet is able to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by negotiating a historic agreement at Camp David in 2005 and deploying peacekeepers to the region, despite opposition to these efforts from both Democrats and Republicans.

Terrorism, particularly from the Bahji network based in Qumar, is a continual problem and in the season 4 finale, Bartlet has to confront the kidnapping of his own daughter at the hands of the group.

A conflict and genocide in the fictional African nation of Equatorial Kundu lead Bartlet to intervene militarily and declare a bold interventionist foreign policy doctrine.

The latter crisis, in his final year, leads to him deploying 140,000 peacekeepers to prevent a full-blown conflict over oil in Kazakhstan, and this becomes a key issue in the 2006 presidential campaign to succeed him.

For reasons presumably tied to his own lack of military service, he is somewhat intimidated by acid-tongued Secretary of Defense Miles Hutchinson and deferential to respected Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Percy Fitzwallace.

It is eventually discovered that the shooters were white supremacists from West Virginia and that his bodyman Charlie Young was the intended target of the assassination attempt, not Bartlet himself.

[21] While Bartlet's campaign efforts are damaged by the controversy, he nonetheless defeats the Republican nominee, Governor Robert Ritchie of Florida, by a landslide and is returned for a second term.

[22] Zoey Bartlet is kidnapped on the day of her graduation from Georgetown University, possibly in retaliation for the assassination of the Qumari defence minister, Abdul ibn Shareef, which her father authorized.

At the end of the fifth season and the beginning of the sixth, the Bartlet administration is dragged into the Israeli-Arab dispute after terrorists attack U.S. government officials on a trip to Gaza.

Eventually, after intense negotiations at Camp David between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Bartlet manages to secure a peace agreement but at a great cost, firing his chief of staff Leo McGarry in a disagreement over the conflict.

Near the end of the season, Congressman Matt Santos of Texas defeats the Republican nominee, Senator Arnold Vinick of California, in the 2006 presidential election and thereby becomes Bartlet's successor.

West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin briefly revived the character for Maureen Dowd's September 20, 2008 New York Times column, where he scripted a hypothetical meeting between Bartlet and then-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Dugan stated that the group was especially pleased that the affected character was a world leader, that the show educated viewers about MS and made it clear the disease is not fatal, and that Bartlet was shown as taking advantage of medical breakthroughs to treat his condition.

"[28] At one point, the producers of The X-Files considered having Sheen portray Bartlet in the final episode of the show, in a scene where he would be informed by members of The Syndicate that Fox Mulder escaped from government custody.