The Lame Duck Congress - TWW S2E6

Original airdate: November 8, 2000

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (27)
Story by: Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. (7)

Directed by: Jeremy Kagan (1)

Synopsis

• Facing stiff opposition in the new Congress that will take office in a few weeks, the administration considers calling back the Senate for a lame-duck session to ratify a nuclear test-ban treaty. A Ukrainian legislator roams the West Wing attempting to meet with the President. Ainsley's gambit of rewriting Sam's briefing paper to reverse his stance sparks a conversation and a change of heart, causing her to realize everybody's voice can truly be heard in this White House. Donna tries to raise awareness about carpal tunnel syndrome.

"It seems to me that more and more we've come to expect less and less from each other. And I think that should change."

Every so often The West Wing brings us an episode illustrating how, no matter how smart or prepared or quick-witted people are, sometimes the rush of events just proves too overwhelming. That sometimes, it's not enough to have a plan or a bunch of intelligent folks on your side - you just aren't able to stay ahead of the tide, and the best you can do is cope with the outcome. Last season's The State Dinner was a great example. This episode is another, although with a little twist.

The staffers get excited about the possibility of having President Bartlet call the Senate back into session in order to ratify a nuclear weapons test-ban treaty. One of the newly elected incoming Senators has made it clear he'll sink the treaty once he's sworn in, so the administration thinks they might have a better shot at getting the treaty ratified by using the President's constitutional authority and calling back the old Congress. It turns out, though, that not even all the votes the White House thought they had on their side are still there: A principled lame-duck Senator from Pennsylvania points out he'll abstain (to honor his constituents' wishes on his way out the door) rather than vote in favor of a treaty he personally had been working to advance for four years.

Meanwhile a member of the Ukrainian parliament, Vasily Konanov, has arrived at the White House, ostensibly to meet with some low-level staffers about something or other. However, his real goal is to get some face time with President Bartlet. Even though the West Wing staff is prepared (they think) to handle his visit and keep him away from any kind of contact with high-level staff, he ends up running into practically everybody from Josh and Toby on down, while being shuttled from office to office as he drunkenly refuses to leave until he meets the President. Leo has to come up with a brazen plan to have Bartlet "accidentally" walk in on Konanov and give him the "meeting" he demands ("When I was Labor Secretary we did it with the Dalai Lama," Leo tells Josh).

And then there's Donna's quest to get workplace protections enforced for the White House staff. She has statistics galore about carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries, and even gets the other assistants to follow Leo's satirical advice ("Type slower") - which just gets Leo mad at Margaret as she hunts-and-pecks her way through a memo.

(By the way, check out the new, bigger pictures! Yes, it took me just 47 blog posts before I realized I actually have some control over how big the pictures are displayed. Internet wizard, I am.)

That effort falls flat when Donna is told that workplace rules passed and enforced throughout the country don't apply to White House or Congressional employees anyway.

Let's not forget CJ and Danny (Danny's back!). CJ wants to deny Danny access to the President for a series of articles, on the surface because she's peeved at the Washington Post for ongoing editorials critical of the administration. But is there something deeper, more personal behind CJ's attitude toward Danny? She kind of blows him off right away at the opening press briefing (Danny: "Has the President considered ordering a lame-duck session so the current Senate can vote on the treaty?" CJ: "Okay, anyone but Danny?"), and later starts to chew him out as he tries to follow up and she's trying to leak the story:

Danny: "I don't work for the editorial staff."

CJ: "Well, that's convenient."

Danny: "Yeah."

CJ: "You expect me to do nothing about it?"

Danny: "What are you going to do, cancel your subscription?"

CJ: "Look -"

Danny: "Slap me around?"

CJ: "Any reason I can't do both?"

You can play that attitude as being purely about the Post's attacks on the White House, but later in the episode we learn the President (who is totally fine with talking to Danny, by the way) has heard things about possible personal connections between the two:

President: "He's a great reporter, and you're a great press secretary. And that's why it was never going to work while the two of you had those jobs."

(In case you're just joining the party, Danny and CJ have been sweet on each other for a while. He gave CJ her goldfish and got a peck on the cheek in return in The Short List, they actually had dinner together on Christmas Eve in In Excelsis Deo, then CJ gave him a big ol' smooch in He Shall, From Time To Time ... in order to "get past it," which she really didn't. But it's clear to any outside observer that a romantic attachment between the White House Press Secretary and the correspondent from the Washington Post would make things rather untenable for the other reporters in the briefing room. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled episode -)

And then we discover CJ knew an editorial position had opened up at the Post, a spot that could remove Danny from the press briefing room and create some space to allow a romantic relationship to develop. And Danny decided not to go after that position, choosing instead to remain on the White House beat. He doesn't think that should stop any relationship, but CJ knows better:

Danny: "CJ. I have no problem with a reporter dating the press secretary."

CJ: "Well, I have a problem, so ..."

And that's how that turn of events sweeps CJ's personal life up and out of her control.

So where's the twist? Well, it comes with our newest member of the team, Ainsley Hayes. Leo, reacting to outside criticism about misuse of the President's time, demands the staff give him a two-page summary of things they want to bring to the President's attention, a restriction that doesn't go over well:

Josh: "A two-page summary's gonna kind of cramp our style."

Leo: "Your style could use a little cramping."

Sam has a position paper about fraud awareness for small business owners, but he doesn't have time to boil it down to two pages. At Josh and Toby's urging, he brings on Ainsley to write the summary for him. She does so, but in the process she totally reverses the position Sam held, arguing that business owners should be given tools to root out fraud and theft by their employees.

And then something kind of magical happens. First Sam rants about the change, going immediately to partisan motives for Ainsley:

Sam: "I can't believe I'm listening to a Republican tell me the government should run background checks and impede business. In fact, I can't believe I'm listening to a Republican. Could it possibly be that most of the people you want to fingerprint have darker skin than you?"

But after just one line of explanation by Ainsley, Sam realizes she may have a point - much to Ainsley's surprise:

Sam: "You -  Listen, I ... you know, I can't. (pause) All right. Start from the beginning."

Ainsley: "Really?"

Sam: "Yeah."

And just like that, Sam changes his opinion because of Ainsley's argument, and that's the plan he ends taking to the President. Ainsley is still gobsmacked:

Ainsley: "I don't understand."

Sam: "You don't understand what?"

Ainsley: "What just happened."

Sam: "Leo said yes, we're in."

Ainsley: "I don't understand."

Sam: "Leo said yes, that's the end of the meeting."

Ainsley: "I was just talking, Sam, I was just talking to you."

Sam: "Well, we play with live ammo around here. You convinced me, I convinced Leo, Leo'll convince the President."

[...]

Ainsley: "You've got to tell me when that's going to happen. Is this how you guys decide to go to war?"

Sam: "I don't know. I'm not usually in the room when they decide that."

This leads to a sweet moment outside Sam's office, where Ainsley gazes at the flurry of activity with government employees on the move, carrying papers, talking through issues - and when we remember her comment from the previous episode about how she's "worshipped" the White House, you realize she sees this place does make a difference, it can have an effect on the nation, and these folks are wise enough to be convinced to change their stance when given a decent argument. It's the one thing in the episode that counters the theme of being overwhelmed by events.

The episode ends on a nice, quiet note, after President Bartlet heads to the residence for the evening. An attendant turns off the lights in the Oval Office, one by one, as the day draws to a close and everyone takes a breath, preparing to face what challenges and unexpected twists they might face tomorrow.


Tales Of Interest!

- The entire plotline of the President calling Congress back into session seems a bit quaint and outdated given our current political situation. In the past, Congress would typically adjourn following the elections, then re-convene the new Congress on January 3. During the time the Senate is in recess (generally for more than three days), the President has the right to name interim appointees to positions normally requiring Senate confirmation. With the increasing acrimony between the branches of government over the past decade or so, though, Congress has essentially kept itself in session almost nonstop, preventing such Presidential appointments from happening. The events of this episode could only have happened with Congress in recess following the midterm elections, which really doesn't happen all that much any more (the outgoing 115th Congress basically stayed in session up until at least Christmas 2018).

- We discover 12 Senators (out of approximately 33 up for election) lost their seats in the midterm elections.

- We get a look at the President's daily schedule: We can see "JOG" at 7 am, followed by a meeting with Leo between 8 and 8:15, the Council of Economic Advisors from 8:30 to 9, and the Secretaries of Education and Housing Development from 9 to 9:45. Then there's a briefing in the Roosevelt Room at 10:00.

- Josh has a new trick: Jumping to touch the top of the door frame when he leaves Leo's office. Here he is doing it after the group leaves the morning meeting (he's in the background behind Sam and Toby):

And here he is doing it as he leaves Leo's office after discussing Konanov meeting the President:

- Gail's fishbowl has the Capitol building in it; fitting for a plotline about calling the Senate back into session.

- It's quick and easy to miss, but there's a little callback Aaron Sorkin wrote in to the latter part of the episode. At the beginning, Leo takes the staff to task for wasting the President's time and not keeping to the posted schedule. Later, we see Konanov being delivered to Josh's office with an on-screen timestamp of 4:35 pm. After that happens, Josh goes to talk to Leo. After that, he meets up with Donna, who tells him, "You've got your four o'clock (meeting)." It's got to be 5:00 pm or later by this time - proving the point of the staff failing to keep to schedules.

- The timeline, again! Senator Marino tells Toby he's still Senator for 10 more weeks. The new Congress (at least in our real-life timeline) takes office on January 3 every two years. If you go back 10 weeks from January 3, you're in the last week of October - which is before the election even happens. Sorkin might have been thinking of presidential inaugurations, which are January 20 - but even then, 10 weeks before that date take you just about to Election Day. Since we know (from The Midterms) that Election Day in this universe was November 7, and the events in this episode happen quite some time after that date (Josh is up and around and jumping at door frames, while he was still recuperating from surgery at home during the election), the 10-week reference makes absolutely no sense.


Quotes    

Josh: " ... And Republicans find the word 'ergonomics' to be silly." 

Donna: "If we backed off everything because of words Republicans find silly we'd have a lot of pregnant teenagers and no health care."

Josh: "We do have a lot of pregnant teenagers and no health care." 

-----

Sam: "I don't need your help. I'm asking for your help so let's not make a federal -"

Ainsley (into phone): "Dad, it's me. Sam's asking for my help."

Sam: "Put the phone down."

Ainsley (into phone): "Gotta go, Dad, I need to help Sam."

Sam: "That must have rolled them in the aisles back in Georgia."

Ainsley: "I'm from North Carolina."

Sam: "Wherever it was you studied baton twirling."

Ainsley: "That'd be Harvard Law School." 

-----

Leo (to Josh, after seeing Margaret slow down her typing at Donna's suggestion): "Can you keep your people in line?"

Josh: "Well, there's been no evidence of that so far." 

-----

Donna (after Josh tells her to meet with Konanov only so the President can 'accidentally' drop by): "I'm being used?"

Josh: "Yes."

Donna: "As a dupe?"

Josh: "Yes."

Donna: "And how am I supposed to feel about that?"

Josh: "How do you usually feel about that?"

Donna: "Josh!"

Josh: "Donna."

Donna: "My value here is that I have no value."

Josh: "You have enormous value to me. You have no value to eastern Europe." 

-----

Danny: "Hey, CJ."

CJ: "Hey, nimrod."

Danny: "Look, I leaked your damn story for you."

CJ: "You leaked it for me, I leaked it to you, pal. I used you like so much ... whatever."

Danny: "Well put." 

-----

President: "I'll tell you what I will do, though, I'm canceling our subscription."

CJ: "Excellent, sir. The White House buys 1100 copies of the Post everyday. Canceling that subscription would send a message loud and clear."

President: "No, I meant just mine and Abbey's. I'll borrow a copy from somebody."

Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)

• The actor playing Bob Fowler in the meeting with Toby looked kind of familiar to me; it's David Kaufman, who had a major role in the 1980s TV series Down To Earth and also had some recurring roles on ER, Presidio Med, and The Mentalist. Most of his credits, though, are for voice work.

• Two of the Senate staffers talking to Sam and Ainsley are familiar faces. Brian Stepanek (on the left) is seen everywhere on TV, including Young Sheldon, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and dozens (if not hundreds) of commercials. Wayne Wilderson (right) I recognize from The Office, but he's also known for Seinfeld, The Steve Harvey Show, CSI, and Veep.
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• Senator Tony Marino is played by Mike Starr (EZ Streets, Ed TV series, Dumb and Dumber). He's had a long acting career, often playing tough guys or Mob types.
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• Josh has moved his desk. In past episodes we saw it was flush up against the wall to the left of the doorway. Now it has been moved more to the center of the room, allowing people to walk around both sides of it.

• President Bartlet again has his Dayton Flyers mug. As pointed out before, Martin Sheen is a Dayton native.

• We have a Laurie reference! Remember Sam's call girl/friend/law student/rescue project from Season 1? Sam and Josh remember:

Josh: "He's sitting in the car with a woman who I imagine is either a security attache or a hooker."

Sam: "Please tell me it's not -"

Josh: "It's no one you know, Sam." 

• Why does Josh seem so surprised at Leo's plan to have the President "accidentally" bump into Konanov? He's literally seen that exact scenario play out before - in his own office! - with Joey Lucas back in Take This Sabbath Day: 

Josh: "Hey, lunatic lady! Trust me when I tell you that there's absolutely no way that you're gonna see the President!"

President (appears around the corner of the doorway): "Hey, Josh." 

• It's becoming clear Dewar's Scotch (on the rocks) must be a favorite drink of Sorkin's. The very first line we heard in Pilot was a bartender calling out an order including "another Dewar's, rocks." In "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" when President Bartlet is being examined by Dr. Tolliver, and the doctor says he needs to cut down on his Scotch intake, he calls out, "Two Dewar's on the rocks, Mrs. Landingham." Lo and behold, in this episode when Senator Marino sits down with Toby, what does he order? Dewar's, rocks.

• President Bartlet tells Danny "I have an election to win in two years, and I'm not about to alienate the Washington Post." Later this season we're going to find out that re-election might not exactly have been the plan for Jed.

• President Bartlet invites Toby up to the residence to play chess. We learned in Five Votes Down that the President doesn't play golf, but he does like chess.

DC location shots    

• There are no location shots (that I'm aware of) in this episode. There is one scene in a restaurant and one in a bar, but I doubt they were filmed in DC.

They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing    

• CJ says, "The 106th Congress is adjourned." The real-life 106th Congress was in session at the time of this episode, from January 1999 to January 2001. 

• The ratification of a nuclear test ban treaty was actually a pretty fresh subject in the fall of 2000. Just over a year prior, in October, 1999, the real-life Senate voted no on ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban treaty (signed in 1996).

• The MSNBC show Hardball (with Chris Matthews) is mentioned. We also see CJ's press conference being telecast on C-SPAN, and a couple of background shots show CNN's Wolf Blitzer onscreen.

• President Bartlet makes a comment about "Barnum Bailey and his sister Sue." There is no "Barnum Bailey" - however the Barnum & Bailey Circus came into being in 1881, later merging with Ringling Brothers Circus in 1919 to become Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows.

• Leo mentions the Dalai Lama and having the President meet him during his time as Secretary of Labor in the mid-1990s; Toby also brings up Indira Gandhi, former prime minister of India.

• Josh scoffingly refers to Donna as "Norma Rae," a 1979 movie starring Sally Field as a union organizer at a textile factory. For another literary reference, Toby mentions Dr. Zhivago, the title character in a 1957 novel by Boris Pasternak, later played by Omar Sharif in a 1965 film.  

• Toby says the Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke believed a representative owes not just his industry but his judgement, and betrays the voter if he sacrifices his judgement to theirs; making the argument that Senator Marino, for example, should have voted the way he felt was right rather than follow the wishes of his constituents. (He's pretty close - the exact quote is "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.") Of course, President Bartlet responds with,"Yeah, and then he was voted out of office five years later by the people of Bristol."   

End credits freeze frame: The morning staff meeting, with everyone talking over one another.