Election Night - TWW S4E7

 

Original airdate: November 6, 2002

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (71)
Story by: David Gerken (1) and David Handelman (1)

Directed by: Lesli Linka Glatter (1)

Synopsis

• The election finally arrives, and while the outcome of the Presidential race is anticlimatic, strange things are happening in Orange County. President Bartlet copes with the return of his MS symptoms. After realizing she voted for the wrong candidate on her absentee ballot, Donna tries to find someone to trade votes with. Toby and Andy get a look at their twins. Charlie helps Anthony and his friend with a civics lesson. 

"There's a moment after you cast the die but before it hits the table. Breathe wrong and you'll change the way it lands."

---

"You want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?"

It's been a long road to this night, election night. It began with a handshake between Toby and Leo to create the Committee to Re-elect the President in The Leadership Breakfast. It caused strife between Jed and Abbey in Bartlet's Third State Of The Union and The War At Home. It shook the administration to its core with the fallout from President Bartlet's coverup of his multiple sclerosis in 17 People, Bad Moon Rising, and The Fall's Gonna Kill You, through the momentous decision of whether Bartlet would even run again in Two Cathedrals. We saw the personal and political struggles of the campaign in Manchester, H.CON-172, The Two Bartlets, and Hartsfield's Landing. Then came the fear of a strong, populist opponent in Governor Ritchie, the tense meeting between the two candidates in Posse Comitatus, and the strategy fights in Debate Camp culminating in the onstage smackdown of Ritchie in Game On.

Now it all comes to an end, in a quite anticlimactic way - at least as far as the counting goes. The President rides the soaring success of his debate performance to a convincing reelection win, but... our old almost forgotten companion, multiple sclerosis, returns to remind us that Bartlet is not quite home free.

The day begins with Josh doing his early morning civic duty, voting at a neighborhood library on the northwest side near Washington Circle (so he must live in that area). A stream of other voters pester him with claims about voting for Bartlet multiple times on the ballot, or inaccurate ways of actually voting, or ... well, just lots of things that drive Josh crazy with the thought that if all Americans are really this dumb about voting, Bartlet's evidently easy victory might not come to be.

But it's all a prank, a group of actors hired by Toby to get Josh back for last week when Josh and the other staffers fooled Toby about the President not being ready for the debate. Josh's spirits are lifted again, at least until one of the actors says he'd be happy to go and vote for President Bartlet right now, although - "do you happen to know if I need to be, I don't know, pre-registered or something?"

But folks are pretty happy back in the White House, fully expecting an easy win when all the votes are counted and trying to evade Toby's superstitious "don't tempt fate" point of view. Sam and CJ seem a little surprised to discover Toby has written both a victory speech and a concession speech, but Toby and Josh know you don't want to get too confident and it's always best to be prepared for anything.

The President appears to be in good spirits himself as he votes in New Hampshire, but there is still some concern that he might actually lose his home state (as we first heard about in Debate Camp) ... and he's also worried about uncontrollable shaking in his hands. He keeps his right hand unnaturally tucked into his jacket pocket as he greets the press, then tells Charlie "just you and me today, okay?"

In the limo, Bartlet tries and fails to sign some papers as he's unable to control his right hand.

The specter of the President's MS that played such a huge role at the end of Season 2, but has barely been mentioned since, now looms over the next four years of his administration. He fights hard during the course of the day trying to hide his symptoms. Meanwhile, Debbie is back and taking control of things in the Oval Office, just as she was tasked to do by the President when he hired her, with the understanding that his health issues are going to need some special consideration. She's sent out an email telling senior staffers the new rules for the morning staff meeting, rules designed to make better use of the President's time so he can perhaps wrap up his day earlier and actually get a night's sleep.

Debbie: "According to the last 100 daily diaries, the President is typically 70 to 90 minutes over-scheduled by the end of the day. The median time a day ends, the over/under is 10:20 pm. As many days have ended after that time as have ended before it. The result being the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces hasn't had a night's sleep in four years. That's both bad and easy to fix."

Debbie also has reconfigured the Oval Office phone system so that the President can just select a line and reach her desk instantly, with the plan being he should never place outgoing calls himself but instead only through her.

President: "I can make my own phone calls."

Debbie: "Yes, but soon you might not necessarily remember that you did. When I place a call, there's a record and that's how you'll know and then you won't be worried about it."

President (considering): "That's good. That's a good idea."  

Bartlet's MS makes itself known again during his victory speech late that night, and Abbey realizes Jed is battling some problems when he goes off script at the end:

She has a real, touching, supportive response for her husband:

Jed: "How'd you know?"

Abbey: "You were off the prompter."

Jed: "Just for a minute at the end. I couldn't see it."

Abbey: "It's all right. There are going to be more days like this. It starts now. It's going to be harder this time."

Like a looming shadow over the celebration of the night, we can see how the President's health condition will continue to play a role as he works through a second term.

Meanwhile, across the country, there are odd things going on in Orange County. Horton Wilde, the Democratic candidate for the California 47th district who died before the election, remains on the ballot due to state law - and the campaign manager, Will Bailey, is fighting hard to keep the Democrat's issues at the forefront as voters go to the polls.

And it's working. An early call from Will lets Sam know that the campaign's exit polls are showing Wilde is actually winning in the contest against a longtime Republican congressman. This especially resonates with Sam because, as he tells Donna, he promised something to Wilde's widow:

Sam: "I did something last week. I went to see a guy named Will Bailey. He ran Horton Wilde's campaign in Orange County and and Wilde died a couple of weeks ago and his widow wanted to know what Democrat was going to stand in for her husband should he win and I said -"

Donna: "You're kidding."

Sam: "You have to understand. This wasn't something that cost me anything. They weren't going to announce unless Wilde won and that was never going to happen in Orange County. It's like the Secretary of Agriculture saying, 'Sure, I'm ready to assume the Presidency should the 18 who come before me die, why not?'"

Donna: "So, why not?"

Sam: "Because it's a two-point race right now."

Sam continues to tell Will - and, by extension, himself - that this bubble can't last, that Democrats and die-hards vote early, that the Republicans will turn out after work and Wilde's lead will fade. But there is rain predicted in Southern California, and rain can suppress voter turnout. Will goes out into the parking lot to beg for the rain to start.

Will: "Now!"

(A bolt of lightning, a crash of thunder, and rain immediately pours down)

Will: "Jesus!"

Elsie: "Wow! What else can you do?"

Will: "I didn't know I could do that!" 

And as the night draws to a close, as the President joyously greets his supporters celebrating a big win, Josh and Toby excitedly tell Sam they're going to stay up and keep watching several tight House races, including this crazy one in California where a dead guy is actually ahead (by 88 votes, from the graphic we're shown).

As a reminder, this storyline of Sam developing a taste for policymaking and electoral office (which we saw sparked in 20 Hours In America) leading to him leaving the White House was conceived by Aaron Sorkin as a way to write Rob Lowe off the show. Lowe wasn't happy with his pay, or the lack of Sam's character development, and the show producers agreed to give him a way out. So here we are.

Speaking of electoral oddities, Donna proudly asks Josh if he can get President Bartlet's autograph on a copy of her Wisconsin absentee ballot, a ballot where for the first time she was able to vote for the winner. She thinks. Josh points out, though, that she didn't vote for whom she thought she voted for:

Donna: "I drew a line through the Democratic ticket."

Josh: "Almost. That's almost what you did. What you did was draw a line through the Republican ticket. You didn't ticket split, you voted for every Republican in Wisconsin. I would check, you may have voted for McCarthy."

Donna is crestfallen, but she quickly comes up with an idea. She'll run to a nearby polling place and find a Ritchie voter who's willing to change their vote to Bartlet, as a way to swap votes and make everything even. It'll take 20 minutes, she tells Josh.

Donna's 20 minutes turn into six hours. It just so happens those Ritchie voters aren't too agreeable with the notion of not voting for their candidate just because a blonde wearing a Bartlet button asks them to trade as an "honor thing." Finally, though, a Navy officer takes note of her yelling at a recalcitrant Republican and offers her help thinking someone stole her purse. She explains her situation, and after some initial trepidation, he agrees to her vote-swap plan.

Donna: "I voted absentee in Wisconsin, and I voted for Ritchie and I meant to vote for the President. Now, I think you should go in there and vote the other way to make it a wash."

Reese: "Yeah, okay."

Donna: "Look ... (slowly realizing what he said) Really?"

Reese: "Yeah. Sounds about right."

As the meet-cute continues, we find out Lt. Commander Reese has actually been assigned to work in Nancy McNally's office at the White House, so I imagine these two will cross paths again.

Charlie has a problem with his Little Brother Anthony, who brings an uninvited classmate along with him to the White House. It seems Orlando is facing suspension from his high school football team due to being caught with an open can of Pabst in his car, and since Orlando is looking for a football scholarship to Ohio State, Anthony thinks Charlie might be able to pull some strings to let him keep playing. Now, exactly what strings the President's personal assistant can pull in order to give a high school student a pass for an alcohol violation are not quite explained.

The day turns into a civics lesson, as Charlie tells the two they're going to have to spend the entire day with him. Which leads to hilarity as Josh collides with Orlando as they walk down the hallway:

Josh: "You should play football."

Orlando: "Hey, man, I'm trying, you know? But I had an open Pabst, and that's the way that goes."

It does turn out that Orlando is a decent guy, he hasn't really been in trouble before, he wasn't drunk (he passed his breathalyzer, he just had an open beer can in his car), and he actually kind of gets into spending the day at the White House. When Charlie discovers Orlando's old enough to vote and thinks he might actually be registered, he decides the day's civic lesson can include actually going to the polls. Which is exciting for Orlando!

Orlando: "Hey, Anthony, I voted!"

Charlie: "All right."

Orlando: "I'm going again."

When Toby isn't chastising staffers for preparing to celebrate Bartlet's victory before the votes are in, he's preparing to head out with Andy for her sonogram of their twins. Before that happens, though, CJ lets Toby know a magazine has the story of Andy's pregnancy and that's it's going to go public.

Toby, ever the pragmatic communications expert, gives the news to Andy and tries to convince her to go public first, to take the story away from the press and own it herself. Trouble is, he chooses the moment when she's wearing a surgical gown and preparing for a medical procedure to do that, which simply makes her angry. And, as she explains, she hadn't made it public before because it was too early, that problems with pregnancies often happen in the first trimester.

But then they see the image of the twins and all that conflict goes away ...

Toby: "Andy, you - you can see their ... heads. My kids have heads."

The campaign is over, Bartlet's final campaign, leading to the last job he'll ever have. And now the groundwork is being laid for what is to come - Sam's new direction, Toby and Andy's future family, and most importantly, what kind of administration we can expect from a President trying to lead the nation while coping with a physically and mentally draining chronic disease.

Tales Of Interest!

- The West Wing trademark "camera spinning around the characters" gets a real workout here, in Lesli Linka Glatter's first shot at directing an episode. I was going to include some photo examples, but why bother, there's so many ... we get one in the cold open at Josh's voting place, we get one as Josh and Donna go over her absentee ballot, we get one or two more in the course of the episode. It's dizzying!

- The first Roosevelt Room meeting about the election is shown at 10 am eastern time, according to the onscreen graphic. Not only are we shown early vote totals - totals that would not be reported anywhere at that time in the morning - we also see mentions of "exit polls" on some of the TV screens. While I figure campaigns would indeed have exit poll information throughout the day, the media would not be reporting about them in states where voting is still going on. Even better: Will calls Sam at about that same time, not long after 10 am, to tell him "we're winning" because of what his exit polls are showing in Orange County. While a campaign reporting their own internal exit poll info to the White House probably does indeed happen, it's just after 7 am in California. The polls barely opened! There's no way Will could have had any usable information from exit polls at the time he called Sam.

- Some election tidbits: In Let Bartlet Be Bartlet we learned the President won election in 1998 with 48 percent of the popular vote (in what obviously was a three-way race). In The Lame Duck Congress we found out that meant he received 48 million votes. At the end of this episode, the election night totals show President Bartlet with nearly 54 million votes, and 55 percent of the total votes cast (at least between him and Governor Ritchie; of course votes for other candidates would reduce his total percentage below 55 percent).

- Donna's plan of having a DC voter change their vote from Ritchie to Bartlet in exchange for her Ritchie vote in Wisconsin isn't exactly the wash she thinks it is, thanks to our friend the Electoral College. Democratic presidential candidates have won DC's three electoral votes ever since the district got them in 1964, usually with 80% or more of the vote. Wisconsin, meanwhile, in 2000 gave its 11 electoral votes to the Democratic candidate by just .22% of the vote, and its 10 electoral votes in 2004 went to the Democrat by just .38%. Donna's Ritchie vote in Wisconsin was far more important electorally than anybody's vote in DC - even a Navy Lt. Commander.

- The perfect storm giving the deceased Horton Wilde an apparent victory in Orange County is plausible. Republican turnout would have been lessened by the twin factors of what appeared to be an unopposed race (giving them confidence Rep. Chuck Webb would win going away) and the knowledge that the Presidential race was easily going to Bartlet (giving Republicans less incentive to go to the polls); also the late-day rain would have kept some voters home.

The instance of a dead candidate winning election to the U.S. Congress had actually happened four times prior to this episode, with the most well-known coming in 2000 when Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan was killed in a plane crash three weeks before election day, yet won the race for Senate. Another example actually happened the very year of this episode, 2002, when Hawaii Rep. Patsy Mink was reelected to the House despite dying of pneumonia in September.

Quotes    

Woman: "I left all but one box blank."

Josh: "Well, then you voted for none but one candidate."

Woman: "Nuts."

Josh: "Did you vote for the President? Was the President the one box?"

Woman: "Ah, who remembers?"

Josh: "It was a minute and a half ago!"

-----

CJ: "It is a party."

Sam: "Yeah, but we won. We don't have to pander."

Toby: "Please don't say that."

CJ: "On your birthday, don't we pander to you?"

Sam: "Not as much as I'd like."

-----

Sam: "You wrote a concession?"

Toby: "Of course I wrote a concession. You want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?" 

-----

Charlie: "I'm not Officer Krupke. I have a job."

Anthony: "Hey, could you try to think back to the days before you were Secretary of State or something? There are good guys and there are bad guys, and when good guys stop letting you play with them, the bad guys have a recruiting field day."

Charlie: "When did you start talking like Mickey Spillane?"

Anthony: "I don't know. Who's Officer Cupcake?"

Charlie: "Okay, you're seeing a musical."

-----

Josh: "Toby, when you get there, it's a good idea to slip the nurse something. Tell her you're hoping for a smooth second trimester."

Andy: "You grease the nurse?"

Toby: "He's kidding. Give me one second, would you, I'll catch right up."

Andy: "Hey, sports fans, this is getting exciting." (She exits)

Toby (quietly): "Yes, so, what do you think, like fifty bucks?"

Josh: "I don't know. It's your first, it's twins ... I don't know. I think I'd give her a hundred." 

-----

Sam (on the phone with Will): "Josh says the exits have you down 20."

Will: "No, he means the tracking. The last one was a week ago and then the DNC left town."

Sam: "He said the exits."

(Josh leans in the doorway)

Josh: "Hey, when I said 'exits' before, I meant 'tracking.' And I'm pretty sure they did the last one about a week ago and then left town."

-----

Elsie: "What'd he say?"

Will: "Don't get your hopes up."

Elsie: "Are they?"

Will: "No. (to staffers) Everybody on the street! (to Elsie) But we're going to make history." 

 

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

• One of the actors pranking Josh at the voting site is played by Megan Cavanagh, a character actor who may be most remembered as Marla Gooch in A League Of Their Own.

• Christian Slater (Heathers, True Romance, Mr. Robot) appears as Lt. Commander Jack Reese. Since he tells Donna he's working for Nancy McNally at the White House - and because he's Christian Slater - we are going to see him again.

• Look, there's our favorite TV-series newscaster, Ivan Allen! He's appeared several times before (sometimes with a graphic indicating the newscaster's name is Roger Salier), most recently in Manchester Part I.

• The cold-open prank on Josh with the befuddled voters is Toby's payback for the prank played on him in the cold-open of Game On - even down to the ten dollars.

• We've seen Toby's superstitions about celebrating too soon and "tempting fate" before, particularly in Six Meetings Before Lunch when he chastises everyone celebrating Mendoza's confirmation to the Supreme Court before the Senate vote is complete.

• Of course the continuing story of the President's MS and how he deals with the symptoms began with He Shall, From Time To Time ...

• Elsie calls Will "big brother," which is the first clue we've had of the two possibly being related.

• Sam's comment about the Secretary of Agriculture being ready to assume the Presidency is a direct callback to He Shall, From Time To Time ... when President Bartlet chose Agriculture Secretary Roger Tribby as the "designated survivor" for the State of the Union speech. One person in the line of succession to the Presidency is held back from attending a mass gathering, like the State of the Union, just in case of a disaster or terrorist attack that might otherwise wipe out the entire line of constitutional Presidential survivors. Also, while Sam says the Agriculture Secretary is eighteenth in line - "sure, I'm ready to assume the Presidency should the 18 that come before me die, why not?" - that cabinet position is actually ninth (just after the Secretary of the Interior and ahead of the Commerce Secretary).

• Debbie setting up a direct line from President Bartlet's phone to her desk recalls Mrs. Landingham chiding Jed for not knowing how the phone intercom works in Shibboleth. 

• The concern over the President losing his home state of New Hampshire was first broached in Debate Camp, when Joey Lucas took the state off the board as a lost cause. I guess Bartlet's debate performance changed things ... it was a nice little moment when CJ and Leo took him aside, stone-faced and serious, with CJ pouring him a drink before they burst into smiles to tell him he had won New Hampshire.

• We got a clue in The War At Home (airing in February 2001, a year and a half before this episode) that the President's condition was likely to worsen should he go on with a second term. 

Jed: "I've had one episode in two years."

Abbey: "Yes, but relapsing-remitting MS can turn into secondary-progressive MS, oftentimes ten years after the initial diagnosis which is exactly where we'll be in two years! Do you know what that's going to look like when it happens?"

Jed: "I know what it's going to ..."

Abbey: "Fatigue - an inability to get through the day -"

Jed: "Look ..."

Abbey: "Memory lapses - loss of cognitive function - failure to reason - failure to think clearly."

With Jed's diagnosis coming in about 1993 (Toby tells Donna it was "eight years ago" in 2001's 18th And Potomac), Abbey's prediction could be just months away.

DC location shots    

• None. You know how I can tell? The 1910 Height of Buildings Act restricts buildings in Washington, DC, to a maximum height of 130 feet, or something like 13 stories. Basically, nothing can be taller than the Capitol dome. In the background of the shot where Donna is trying to find a voter to swap votes with you can see the 62-story-tall AON Center - which is not only far above that height restriction, but is also located in Los Angeles. 

• The building used as the voting place was the PacMutual building, at 523 West 6th Street in Los Angeles.

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

• The West End Neighborhood Library really is at 24th and L in Washington, DC - technically 2301 L Street, but between 23rd and 24th. The opening scene wasn't filmed there, I'm guessing, but Sorkin did get the location right.

• When Sam is taking Will's first phone call, he hums the tune (Won't You Come Home) Bill Bailey. 

• CJ tells Toby Roll Call has the information about Andy's pregnancy.

• Sam calls Will "Sancho," meaning Sancho Panza, Don Quixote's trusty squire in the novel Don Quixote.

• When Josh is giving Donna a hard time about her absentee ballot he says she probably voted for McCarthy, meaning Joe McCarthy, the reviled Republican Senator from Wisconsin who baselessly alleged widespread Communist infiltration of the government in the 1950sm, instigating the witch hunts and blacklists of the period.

• The framed item on the wall behind Charlie's desk sure looks like it includes pictures of President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore ... whose administration did not exist in The West Wing universe.

• Charlie's conversation with Orlando and Anthony includes references to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Officer Krupke from West Side Story, the hardboiled crime novelist Mickey Spillane, social reformer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and the Friars Club.

• Debbie mentions a fear of reading stemming from works by Balzac as a reason why Josh may not have read her three-line email.

• We get a reference to the TV show Meet The Press and "Russert," meaning the show's host at the time, Tim Russert.

• Donna says it's not the "bomb sequence on the USS Essex" as she's asking Reese who he's voting for.

• Anthony tells Charlie they fed the stolen goat mascot Cheetos; we can also see a bag of Fritos visible in the bullpen as CJ heads off to tell the President about New Hampshire.

• The President's speech refers to Bosnia, Chechnya, and Rwanda as countries who yearn for the democracy represented in American elections. All three countries dealt with military conflicts or factional crises in the mid-1990s, during the Clinton administration.

• The song playing at the victory rally is Richie Havens' version of The Times They Are a-Changin', recorded in 1994.

• One of the members of the "acting troupe, with a U" is carrying a Starbucks cup.

• Josh also has a Starbucks cup when he comes into the Roosevelt Room after voting.

• One of Will's staffers is carrying a coffee cup and a Dunkin Donuts Munchkins box as she comes into the Mattress World building.

End credits freeze frame: The President and Abbey waving to the crowd after his victory speech.

Previous episode: Game On

Next episode: Process Stories