Guns Not Butter - TWW S4E12

 

Original airdate: January 8, 2003

Written by: Eli Attie (6) & Kevin Falls (7) and Aaron Sorkin (75)

Directed by: Bill D'Elia (2)

Synopsis

• Josh pulls out all the stops to try to squeeze a foreign aid bill through the Senate. Charlie's effort to show off in front of Zoey and Jean-Paul backfires. CJ sets up a presidential photo op with a goat.

"I want to be the guy. You want to be the guy the guy counts on."

We're into the second half of Season 4, and therefore the second half of the series as a whole, and that means we'll start to see episode titles that don't ring much of a bell for me. For the folks who think I'm a true Wing-nut, that may sound crazy, but while I do consider myself a big fan of the show, I'm far from a super fan, if you know what I mean. I'm really interested to see what my reaction is when this blog advances to Season 5, and I watch episodes I've literally seen only once before in my life (and that was about four years ago - while I did watch the series when it originally aired almost faithfully, there was a swath of Season 5 where I lost interest).

Anyhow, this is one of those titles that doesn't bring back much of a recollection of what happens, but it turns out it's a really enjoyable episode. I think the writing is tight, the storyline following Josh and the administration fighting to get the last votes they need to pass a bill is gripping and cleverly plotted, and there's a lot of humor (mixing up Will Bailey's name in various ways never gets old). I can't explain why that doesn't stick with the title Guns Not Butter, but it just hasn't with me, anyway.

We've actually had something like this story before, in Five Votes Down, although that was told in a different way with a different outcome. The basic plot outlines are similar, but I think these are vastly different stories. 

We start the show with Josh being told the administration has lost one of the 50 Senate votes he thought  were in the bag to pass a foreign aid bill. The outlines of the bill are expressed eloquently by the President at a couple of speeches during the day, as well as discussion about the bill in the White House - Aaron Sorkin and his writing staff make a very good argument about the importance of American aid to foreign countries, and how it's an overall benefit for the nation as well as the world. 

But Senators are falling back on the results of a new poll - 68 percent of respondents think foreign aid spending is too high, and 59 percent think it should be cut. Josh repeats that stat over and over as he goes back to the drawing board to try to find someone else to flip, knowing if they can get to 50 votes they have Vice President Hoynes ready to break the tie. He settles on Grace Hardin, a newly elected Democratic Senator from Georgia whom Josh thinks would be unable to turn down a direct request from the President. 

Trouble is, they can't get hold of her. She's traveling back to Washington from Atlanta, and when an aide tells Josh she'll agree to vote yes if the President asks her directly, he assigns Donna the task of catching her at the airport and putting a cell phone directly in her hand, which gives Janel Moloney a great storyline in this episode. Hardin is pretty savvy, though ... when Donna arrives at National Airport with the flight information she was given, she finds out the Senator actually came back secretly on an earlier flight. With a bit of envelope-related subterfuge and the batting of her eyes, she tricks a staffer into revealing where the Senator is.

That brings us to a scene in a hotel kitchen, where we discover Donna is on a first-name basis with the squabbling chefs (that's pretty funny, with Giuseppe's encouragement to get her to eat something)

 - but she's been tricked again, as Senator Hardin sent a subordinate to speak in her place at that event. Donna tries to fool the Senator's aide, pretending to receive a phone call saying they've located the votes elsewhere, but by dropping the names of those Senators into the conversation she makes it simple for Hardin to verify that it was a ruse.

Hardin plays both sides perfectly, telling the administration she'll change her vote if she gets the call from the White House, but then skillfully avoiding any way of actually taking the call. Meanwhile Toby gets an offer from a Tennessee Republican - he'll change his vote to yes if the administration will sign off on a study of the effectiveness of remote prayer. (The repeated confusion about the amount of his request - "$115 thousand." "Million. You mean million." - is more funny stuff in the episode.)

Josh is willing to take the offer mixing the federal government with religion, which shows his desperation about getting the bill through the Senate. The other staffers and the President, though, aren't onboard with the notion of federal funding for a study involving religion and prayer, even though it's only $115,000.

Josh: "$115,000 is what Commerce spends on Post-Its."

President: "Toby?"

Toby: "Threats to civil liberties only ever come a few dollars at a time."

I think Josh actually makes a good argument - the study could look at prayer of various faiths and creeds, so it's not funding a dedicated Christian religious point of view, and such studies were, in real life, actually funded by the NIH at about the time of this episode - but the President is firm. He's not going to devote taxpayer dollars to a study on the effectiveness of prayer (which, as a matter of fact, needs to be taken on faith alone anyway).

President: "Well, in my faith, we've known it's worked for two thousand years. I never knew there was data available, but okay."

The President hits the nail on the head with why Josh is so insistent:

President: "You're not willing to toss it overboard to win. You're willing to toss it overboard to avoid disappointing Leo. You know what the difference is between you and me? I want to be the guy. You want to be the guy the guy counts on."

So they agree, the vote is lost, they'll go to another continuing resolution to keep foreign aid funding (although at a lower rate), and they'll try again. Josh and Donna cross paths in the President's outer office:

Donna: "Is it me or is this getting harder?"

Josh: "It's getting harder."

Donna tells Josh the story of Fish Hooks McCarthy, a New York politician in the early 1900s who was credited with the prayer, "O Lord, give me health and strength. We'll steal the rest."

Donna: "You've got health and strength, both of which, coincidentally, I prayed for after hot lead was shot into your body."

Josh: "Yeah ... you're going to need some kryptonite, by the way."

Donna: "Okay, settle down."

Josh: "All right."

Donna: "So you've got health and strength."

(pause) 

Josh: "And we'll steal the rest?"

Donna: "Bet your ass."

And that conversation leads us to Josh talking to Will Bailey, who asks him why he's so obsessed with the poll showing public opinion against foreign aid:

Josh: "So, if we're lucky, foreign aid's going to be funded for another 90 days at 75 cents on the dollar. No one who's ever said they wanted bipartisanship has ever meant it. But the people are speaking, because 68 percent think we give too much in foreign aid, and 59 percent think it should be cut."

Will: "You like that stat?"

Josh: "I do."

Will: "Why?"

Josh: "Because nine percent think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut! Nine percent of respondents could not fully get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check, for 'I have utterly no idea what you're talking about, please, God, don't ask for my input.'" 

There's really just one other storyline in the episode, but it's also about wanting to be "the guy the guy counts on." Charlie is feeling resentment toward Zoey's new boyfriend, Jean-Paul, and when Jean-Paul mocks Charlie for just sorting the President's mail without having any power to get anything done, Charlie goes a bit rogue. You see, one of those messages being sorted was from a service member handed to Charlie while the President was greeting the public at a rope line, a plea for the government to help members of the military who are paid so little they qualify for food stamps.

Charlie wants to show off a little for Zoey, particular when Jean-Paul calls him out for being "powerless" even when people see him standing next to the President.

As Charlie and Zoey exchange looks, Charlie determinedly says no, he's not powerless, and he's directed the note to the attention of the Pentagon.

Which he only then proceeds to do, calling a buddy at the Pentagon he plays basketball with. Trouble is, he tells the assistant in that office that he's calling from the office of the President, and instead of getting some ideas from a sergeant he knows, he's directed straight to a colonel - and now this is a big thing. At the colonel's request, Charlie sends the note over.

Which results in a thick memo being dropped on Charlie's desk:

"The table of contents is six pages long!"

... a memo that's also cc'ed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of State, the Vice President, Leo - and President Bartlet himself. And now Charlie's effort to show off in front of Jean-Paul, to get a little attention paid to a service member who asked Charlie for help, has ended up in a huge Pentagon report listing all the things that would need to be cut in the military budget in order to pay soldiers more.

President: "There are a couple of thousand military families on food stamps. I can't stand it; the Pentagon knows it. Some families are eligible, some aren't. To change it, they'd have to raise everyone's pay, which they can't do, and this memo's a reminder. It's a get-off-our-backs memo. And you thought you were done with turf wars."

Charlie: "Did it cause any damage?"

President: "You decommissioned two aircraft carriers."

Charlie (incredulous): "Really?"

President: "No."

But Bartlet does ask Charlie to drop the note in his bag, so he can take a look himself.

Charlie's renewed interest in Zoey in the face of Jean-Paul's involvement brings us some funny stuff, too. The President is no fan of Jean-Paul himself, but as a father he's not that big of a fan of Charlie's romantic interest in Zoey, either. He baits him with this:

President (to Charlie): "Boy, Zoey's growing up nicely, isn't she?"

Charlie (smiling): "Yesss, she is."

President: "I'm on your side in this thing, but just barely. Just by a little bit, because he's French and royal. These are very special, very limited circumstances under which we're allies, you and I." 

This leads to the President's later discussion with Josh, with Josh ending up in hot water, too:

President: "Hey, Zoey's growing up very nicely, isn't she?"

Josh (too happily): "Man, I'll say."

Those two looks by Martin Sheen are just priceless.

The storyline with the photo op for Heifer International - supposedly with a cow, but then it turns out to be with a goat - is humorous in itself, but Sorkin uses President Bartlet to speak eloquently about how efforts like Heifer International to improve the lives of the impoverished around the globe ought to prove the worth of American aid to foreign countries. Before we get there, though, we get Leo's face when the goat arrives outside the White House:

And his hitting the nail on the head about how this goat photo op ever got approved:

CJ: "Well, first of all, that's not a cow. It's not! It's a goat. Yeah, I may have agreed to something about a goat."

Leo: "Did the First Lady get you drunk and take you shopping?"

CJ: "Leo ... yes."

And, of course, Will's reaction to finding a goat standing in his office:

The struggle of a second term in the face of congressional opposition really kicks off here, but the true theme is: Why do we do what we do? Is it for self-aggrandizement? Is it to please those whose opinions we respect and whose trust we crave? Or is it for the greater good, for the betterment of those around us, whether in this country or around the world? It's obviously that last one, but we're all human here with our own human frailties and needs and wants, and sometimes that gets in the way.

That's part of why I love The West Wing; maybe it is simplistic and hokey and overly trusting, but at its heart it makes us want to be better.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- This is the second straight episode with no Rob Lowe, not even a Seaborn For Congress poster. He's still in the opening credits, but he's only got a couple of appearances upcoming before he departs the show (SPOILER ALERT: Sam does return at the very end of the series).

- It's both refreshing and a little sad to see the give-and-take of politics from the early 2000s; legislators are willing to horse-trade for votes, helping someone (even from the other party!) to get their bill passed in exchange for a vote supporting one of their own pet projects. With the removal of earmarks from the lawmaking process, that has nearly disappeared in today's government. It's also oddly quaint to see Josh considering going to Republicans to try to sway their votes - today's entrenched partisanship almost always sees Republicans voting in a bloc against any kind of Democratic proposal (it happens the other way, too, but  today's Democrats don't seem nearly as monolithic as the anti-everything GOP).

- Jean-Paul is one of the least-liked characters in West Wing lore, and the performance of Trent Ford is just one of the many reasons why, but this barely stifled yawn as he and Zoey walk along with the President is actually a great little insight into his character.

- A little Easter egg here; at the airport baggage claim, we see a driver holding a sign reading "B. D'Elia." Bill D'Elia was the director of this episode.

- CJ actually talks to Gail ("What's up, there, Gail?" after Danny leaves); in the fishbowl we see some cows, a reference to the Heifer International photo op.

Quotes    

President: "And is there a cow on my schedule today?"

CJ: "It's called Heifer International. Don't worry about it."

President: "I'm meeting with a cow. I shouldn't worry about it."

CJ: "It's a photo op with a cow, sir. It's not a sit-down."

President: "I like your sass."

CJ: "You've got a very nice sass yourself ... sir."

President: "What, are you touring?" 

-----

President: "Please, my daughter's dating a kid who's better looking than my wife."

-----

President (yelling): "Zoey!"

Zoey: "I don't respond when you shout."

President: "Yeah, I think you'd respond if I stopped feeding you."

Zoey (to Jean-Paul): "Ignore him."

Jean-Paul: "Oh, yes, I do." 

-----

Leo: "If the President's wearing a hat, or that thing's wearing a Bartlet button, I'm hiding snakes in your car."

CJ: "Come on, don't say that! Not even to joke!"

Leo: "You're never gonna know where they are -"

CJ: "Leo!"

Leo: "Or if you got them all out. ... gonna lay their eggs right in the glove compartment."

-----

CJ: "I didn't put the goat in your office, someone else must have."

Will: "You didn't."

CJ: "I put it in the office that's being used by a new guy Toby and Josh are trying to give a hard time to - (spinning around to Will) oh, wait!"

Will: "You understand I'm working on the inaugural address, right?"

CJ: "How's that going?"

Will: "There's bicycles and goats in my office!"

-----

CJ: "So, I think this will work. I think it says, 'Well, you're impoverished and while we don't care, we don't want you to go away empty-handed, so we offer you this goat, Ron, to give you milk.'"

Will: "Do male goats give milk?"

CJ (considers): "No, no, of course they don't. So, we offer you this thing that'll just gnaw on your stuff." 

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

• Danica McKellar's Elsie Snuffin, Will's half-sister and joke-writing assistant, pops up for the first time since Swiss Diplomacy.

• Will and Josh make an inside joke about Aaron Sorkin's reputation for "walk and talks" with Will telling Josh, "You get a pretty good aerobic workout talking to someone in this building," to which Josh replies, "I've heard the jokes."

• Charlie's past romantic relationship with Zoey (which we saw at the end of Season 1 and the beginning of Season 2) and his newfound rivalry with Jean-Paul is a key plot point.

• The President also refers to Charlie's past growing up around street gangs with his comment, "And you thought you were done with turf wars." Charlie spoke personally about gangs in his neighborhood in Isaac And Ishmael.

• Danny continues to dig into the story of the Shareef assassination from Posse Comitatus. We also discover the pilot's name was listed as Jameel Bari - if you recall from that episode, Admiral Fitzwallis said the plan would rely on putting one of "our people" on the plane as Shareef's pilot, and Danny is trying to follow that trail.

• Bartlet makes a remark about his memory having "only so much RAM" - Bruno Gianelli made the exact same remark ("I have only so much RAM in my head") about Title IX in College Kids.

• In the conversation with Senator Hoebuck Toby brings up CJ's experience as the focus of a remote prayer brigade "a few months ago"; while the story was told in Debate Camp, aired about four months before this episode, that story was actually a flashback to the early days of the administration in 1999 - four years ago.

• The Senator responds with a rude reference to Simon Donovan's death in Posse Comitatus.

• References to Will's office being filled with bicycles and Seaborn For Congress posters come from Holy Night.

• Donna tells Josh she prayed for his health and strength after he was shot (In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen). She later tells Senator Hardin's aide that, among other things, she went to North Dakota at Josh's request (We Killed Yamamoto).

DC location shots    

• None. The building we see the President and his entourage coming out of at the beginning of the episode is, I believe, the Los Angeles Convention Center (the sign for Compass Cafe led me to that, and the architecture checks out).

(Here's what the Convention Center really looks like on the outside.)

 

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

• Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Warren Harding get mentioned right out of the gate.

• Heifer International is a very real and very worthy organization that helps impoverished farm families around the world become more self-sufficient. They don't just provide animals for milk, though, they also contribute other agricultural supplies, including animals to start herds to supply meat (which would be Ron's role, to help start a herd of goats).

• A shot of the phone on Charlie's desk shows it's from Nortel Networks. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and went out of business in 2013.

• Will tells Josh that Senator Cantina voted against Kosovo peacekeeping - in reality, the US military joined a joint UN peacekeeping force in Kosovo in 1999, under the Clinton administration; in The West Wing universe President Bartlet took office in January of 1999 and therefore this operation would have occurred under his watch (although it's never really been mentioned in the show; in Season 1 background TVs often depicted real-world cable news coverage of the crisis in the Balkans, however).

• Duke University Medical Center indeed exists (remember, Sam was a graduate of Duke Law). There have been several studies on the medical effects of "remote prayer" over the years, including a study tracking 150 AIDS patients between 2000 and 2003 that was, indeed, partially funded by the NIH.

• There are several mentions about Senator Hardin or her staff being at Dirksen; that's the Dirksen Senate Office Building, named after former Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen.

• Charlie is seen drinking from a can of Hansen's soda.

• British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gets quoted several times, as well as a mention of posing in a photograph with Will and Elsie's grandfather.

• President Bartlet calls Toby, Leo, Josh, and CJ The Temptations.

• Donna quotes "Fish Hooks" McCarthy's prayer to "Give us health and strength. we'll steal the rest." McCarthy was a real New York City political figure around the turn of the 20th century, though the prayer may be apocryphal.

• In the scene with CJ and Danny watching the vote and eating Chinese food, they're both drinking beer. I couldn't quite see Danny's bottle, but CJ is clearly drinking a Corona.

• Will brings up "101 Dalmatians" as he complains about bicycles and goats in his office; a clear reference to the Disney film.

• Will refers to himself as Eton valedictorian.

End credits freeze frame: Everyone gathered for the photo op with the goat.

Previous episode: Holy Night

Next episode: The Long Goodbye