Walking And Talking And Yelling At Clouds: The Stormy Present

Original airdate: January 7, 2004

Teleplay by: John Sacret Young (1)
Story by: John Sacret Young & Josh Singer (1)

Directed by: Alex Graves (18)

Synopsis

President Bartlet attends the funeral of a former President as turmoil grips Saudi Arabia. Josh gets involved in a fight between North Carolina and Connecticut, and CJ tracks down a story about secret Pentagon mind control projects.

"I guess this changes things."

"I'm not sure it changes anything."

This may be just my own opinion, but we are in a series of quite pedestrian West Wing episodes. When people talk about the quality of the show dropping off in Season 5, the episodes between Shutdown and The Supremes are exactly the ones they mean (and don't forget, The Supremes is immediately followed by what is widely considered one of the very worst West Wing episodes ever). Let's be frank, I think for an entire year - from Shutdown until the introduction of Sen. Vinick and Rep. Santos about nine episodes into Season 6 - the series finds itself floundering, on unsteady ground, and not sure about what stories it's supposed to be telling.

Even worse, and again just in my opinion, this episode is trying pretty hard to be a conservative-ish screed promoting American imperialism and decrying Muslim fundamentalism. The real world is two-plus years past the events of 9/11, but the impact of that attack on politics, foreign policy, and the attitudes of everyday Americans is still pretty raw. Okay, sure, we get the calming liberal point of view from President Newman, and President Bartlet remains unwilling to use military force or even much in the way of diplomatic coercion against our ally Saudi Arabia - although he's about to before the protests are subdued! - but the overwhelming impression left by the end of the episode comes down firmly on the side of "The United States knows best, the United States is the beacon of freedom and democracy in the world, and thus the United States needs to compel Muslim nations to embrace freedom (by force if necessary) since the struggle against global religious fanaticism is a battle for our survival just like the Civil War." At least that's what I get from Lassiter's obsession with the soil from American battlefields, the in-your-face comparisons to Lincoln and the issues facing him, and the final scene of Bartlet contemplating America's future while he gazes at the Lincoln Memorial.

Essentially I see the writers of this episode taking the high school student's question from Isaac And Ishmael - "why do they hate us?" - and instead of considering Josh and Sam and their earnest attempt to address that question, they ignore that completely and double down to say, "Yeah, why DO they hate us? We can't think of any reason ... guess the United States need to show them by force why we are right and they are wrong." I don't know, folks, talk me out of this, but this is the direction I see the episode heading.

(Say, whatever happened to the Bartlet Doctrine unveiled in his second Inaugural speech in Inauguration: Over There? President Bartlet declared it was now American policy to promote human rights anywhere in the world, by use of the military if it came to that, and immediately sent troops into Equatorial Kundu to stop killings and genocide. Seems to me the wish for democracy and free elections, especially in the face of imprisonment and beheadings for those calling for change, would qualify - but then again, Equatorial Kundu isn't exactly Saudi Arabia, in military capabilities, alliances with the United States, or in oil reserves. Given the history of the doctrine with Kundu, I'd daresay the Saudi government's use of force against pro-democracy protests would be even more of a justification for American military involvement ... instead Bartlet sees that as a reason to back down and leave well enough alone.)

We can tear through the plot fairly quickly. A former Republican President, Owen Lassiter, has died, and President Bartlet and what I can only assume are the other two surviving Presidents (D.W. Newman and Glenallen Walken) fly across the country to attend the funeral. Events are complicated by pro-democracy uprisings in Saudi Arabia, putting Bartlet and his administration in kind of a sticky bind between promoting freedom and keeping a good relationship with the oil-producing monarchy in charge.

Bartlet and the other Presidents have some good back-and-forth talks about what to do, with Walken on the side of American power stepping in to back the protesters and force regime change, and Newman urging caution and reminding the President of the failed outcomes of such attempts in the past. We do get a neat scene with three Presidents, past and present, all sitting together on Air Force One discussing foreign policy:

As things are getting tense in the Middle East, President Bartlet makes the decision to move naval forces into the Persian Gulf as a sign of support for the democratic protesters, and is ready to give the Saudi royal family an ultimatum. But then, before the United States goes all-in with its big stick, the previously peaceful protests turn violent (perhaps at the instigation of government provocateurs?), government forces crack down, and the uprising is thwarted.

As that's happening in Saudi Arabia, President Bartlet has a few minutes with President Lassiter's widow, in the Oval Office mockup built as part of the Lassiter Presidential Library. A library that's apparently been closed to the public for some time, since Lassiter had been living there in his hospital bed before his death.

Lassiter had also spent his post-White House days traveling to battlefields where American soldiers had fought, collecting soil from the places where American blood had been shed. A bit obsessive, I think, and another real downer for people who may have been visiting the Lassiter library:

(Was Lassiter the one-term Republican who preceded Bartlet? We don't know for sure, but given that we only see Newman and Walker as other living Presidents, it's most likely. So all the collection of all the soil in these jars has happened just since Bartlet took office and replaced Lassiter in January 1999.)

Mrs. Lassiter gives President Bartlet a letter, one we saw Lassiter writing at the beginning of the episode, a sort of manifesto about the American ideal, its responsibility to stand firm in the face of Islamic fundamentalism - a real conservative screed. It ends with this:

Which seems to say Lassiter's point is Lincoln's fight to save the Union and America itself is reflected today in the global struggle against religious extremism. Huh. President Bartlet, back in Washington, seems to think Lassiter had a point, as he does exactly what he had been asked to do.

I don't know. I don't buy the connection between freedom in Saudi Arabia and Lincoln fighting the Civil War. Saudi Arabian democracy advocates need their own Lincoln, not the military might of the United States kicking out the monarchy and roiling the Middle East even further into anti-American outrage. Perhaps Bartlet saw Arujunah as that Lincoln, and hoped to provide him enough support to survive. But I'm no foreign policy expert.

Otherwise Josh finds himself in the middle of a battle between North Carolina and Connecticut over a stolen copy of the Bill of Rights (based on a real event), but his primary contribution is a faltering "Go Whalers." We do get to see Josh's facial reaction to getting schooled by the President over knowledge of Lincoln trivia when they're all trying to get to Ford's Theatre:

There's another clever scene as the staffers are preparing for the Ford's Theatre event - Toby, who is hiding from the President and his Lincoln quizzes, is staked out on CJ's office sofa

as a distracted CJ has her eyes on the TV and starts to change her clothes ... until Toby makes a remark about something on the television.

CJ: "Was there something you wanted?"
Toby: "World peace?"

Those two have such a good relationship, you can tell there's history and respect and a real mutual understanding between them.

CJ also finds herself tangled up in news of a possible Pentagon mind-control project, which results in her meeting with a DARPA scientist (Dr. Milkman, of course) who gets her all riled up about medical records and privacy and the study of a person's gait ... but you know what? None of these stories really pay off, and that includes the A plot.

The mind-control thing just kind of ends with a conversation between CJ and Josh:

Josh: "Does the press have the story?"

CJ: "Huh?"

Josh: "The mind-control story, didn't you say it was going to break?"

CJ: "Yeah."

Josh: "So the story breaks, and the public has roughly the same reaction you're having. No more mind control, no more sifting."

The Bill of Rights theft comes to a conclusion off-screen, as Josh tells CJ everything got worked out, no problem. And as I've gone over above, the storyline about democracy in Saudi Arabia ends pretty much exactly where it began, with President Bartlet's eventual decision to back the protests coming just late enough to not make a difference. To me, it's all very unsatisfying, with all the stories just - ending.

Maybe that's what John Sacret Young was after, to illustrate the frustration and futility and how all the best-laid plans and good-faith efforts in the world don't always pay off. But I mean, come on, that's not what we watch The West Wing for, is it? Particularly when those themes are as poorly defined and clunkily put together as what we get in this episode. It's little more than a West Wing curiosity of the time, a time capsule of George W. Bush-era American foreign policy - nothing more than that.

Well, a drunk Toby singing Suicide Is Painless while Charlie takes his whiskey bottle away is pretty good, but it doesn't really make up for the rest.

Tales Of Interest!

- This episode is the landmark 100th of the series. Typically, 100 episodes is the point at which a TV series becomes attractive for syndication, where it can be sold to distributors who air them on individual TV stations (or niche cable channels) rather than on the network schedule. As a matter of fact, the Bravo cable channel started with reruns of The West Wing in the fall of 2003, just as Season 5 started on NBC, so a syndication deal had already been done. I don't know if the series was ever syndicated to individual stations - one-hour dramas aren't nearly as attractive to TV stations as half-hour sitcoms, which fit their schedules better - but I do know episodes were shown on the TNT cable channel leading up to the 2020 election. Of course, with streaming services coming to the forefront, The West Wing had a long run on Netflix before moving to the HBO Max service in late 2020.

- There is no "previously on The West Wing" introduction to this episode with scenes from earlier shows, just the drum roll with the flag and then immediately to the title card. This usually indicates a stand-alone episode that doesn't tie in to earlier storylines, which is pretty much the case here. It's also rare - with the obvious exceptions of Pilot (when there were no previous scenes to show) and Documentary Special, it's only happened three times before now: Take This Sabbath Day, Isaac And Ishmael (which is non-canon and doesn't technically exist in the West Wing timeline), and The Dogs Of War.

- Speaking of pedestrian hackery ... having a Secret Service agent in the White House calling out "The President's dead" into his wrist microphone as he moves past Leo and Mallory in the hallway is just an outlandishly inconceivable device to throw a scare into the audience. Come on, John Sacret Young - I don't know if this is beneath you, but it's far, far beneath even an average West Wing teleplay. This is the reason the Secret Service uses code names for the figures they protect, like "Eagle" for President Bartlet or "Bookbag" for Zoey or "Flamingo" for CJ ... so they don't refer to every President, past and current, as "the President" and give Leo a heart attack (which is especially cruel considering Leo's upcoming storylines, as well as John Spencer's fate).

- I've mentioned the possible West Wing universe Presidential timeline before, particularly the fact that there's never been a reference to a real-life President since Kennedy or LBJ (only a couple of loose references to LBJ, and only two mentions of Nixon, neither one that clearly indicate he was President). The fact we find out about two former Presidents here - Lassiter and Newman - doesn't do a lot to clear things up. We know from The Short List and comments by retiring Supreme Court justice Crouch that a Republican preceded Bartlet in office ("I waited for a Democrat. Instead I got you"). We also know from In Excelsis Deo that Leo served as Secretary of Labor in a Democratic administration in 1993 (when he entered rehab), which means the Republican in office before Bartlet was a one-termer. We know from Separation Of Powers that there have been six administrations and 22 Congresses since Chief Justice Ashland was named to the Court in the early 1960s, although that math still doesn't work out unless you ignore either Bartlet or Kennedy (and as Josh mentions, no one is counting Walken's two-day administration):

Bartlet: elected 1998-present

Unknown Republican: elected 1994-98 (could this be Lassiter?)

Unknown Democrat: possibly two terms, elected 1986-94 (could this be Newman? The fact Toby says he'd "voted for you a couple of times" could indicate he served two terms. However, Leo - who we know served in this President's Cabinet in the early 1990s - makes no mention of any relationship with Newman. It's a puzzler ...)

Possibly another two-term unknown elected 1978-86

Possibly another two-term unknown elected 1970-78

Possibly another two-ish term unknown (LBJ, perhaps?) serving from 1963 to 1970 (and yes, I realize there's a shift between election years from real-life to the West Wing universe)

Kennedy: elected real-world 1960, assassinated 1963

I've speculated before about the timeline changing at Nixon, with his resignation in 1974 bringing about new elections called that year to reset the electoral timeline as we see it in the series. That would mean a Kennedy administration until 1963, LBJ from 1963 to 1968, Nixon from 1968 to 1974 ... then there would have to have been at least three Presidents between 1974 and the one-term Republican serving before Bartlet (there's five terms in between there, that means at least three different administrations). That makes six full administrations between Kennedy and Bartlet, which doesn't at all agree with the count for Chief Justice Ashland in Separation Of Powers. So, I dunno.

- The story of North Carolina's copy of the Bill of Rights, its theft by a Union soldier in 1865, and its mysterious whereabouts until the FBI got involved and recovered the copy in 2003 is pretty fascinating. Although unlike how it's described in this episode, Connecticut plays no role in the actual story. The document turned up on a businessman's wall in Indiana in 1897. That family refused to surrender it until they offered to sell it back to North Carolina in 1925, but the state refused to pay for what they considered their own stolen property. Descendants offered to sell it again in 1975, were again rebuffed, and it was eventually sold to an antique dealer in 2000. When he tried to sell it to the National Constitution Center in 2003 (claiming he did not know the document's origin), the FBI got involved in a sting operation to seize the copy. It would take another five years of court battles before North Carolina got full ownership rights.

- We can see just a bit of Gail's fishbowl while Dr. Milkman is talking about DARPA, but we can't see if anything is in there.

- Why'd They Come Up With The Stormy Present?

As President Bartlet and Walken reminisce about President Lassiter, Walken recalls a time Lassiter was quoting Lincoln's second inaugural address and Bartlet fills in the line: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present." Lincoln was, of course, referring to the Civil War; Bartlet draws a parallel to the pro-democracy protests in Saudi Arabia, and relations with the Arab world in general.

Quotes

CJ: "Is there a reason you're following me?"

Toby: "Do I need a reason?"

-----

CJ: "Leo, I got a question yesterday ... tell me we're not conducting mind-control research at the Pentagon."

Leo (deadpan): "We're not conducting mind-control research at the Pentagon."

CJ (staring back intently): "You're not doing it on me right now?"

-----

Carol: "There's a man in your office."

CJ: "Okay."

Carol: "I didn't see him come, I turned around, and he was there."

CJ: "A man in my office. (Carol nods) Is he dashing?"

Carol: "Not how I'd describe him."

-----

Toby: "Without strong guidance popular elections could be a one-time event."

President Newman: "Strong guidance ... you think we should colonize?"

Toby: "No, I think we should run away, as fast and as far away as we can."

-----

Toby: "I've been walking up and down these aisles, looking at these old men - these great and terrible old men - and thinking, a prosperous, free, and democratic Saudi Arabia is something to wish for. But the men on this plane spent the better part of the late 20th century trying to play God in other countries, and the regimes they anointed are the ones that haunt us today."

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

The fantastic actor James Cromwell (Babe, Star Trek: First Contact, Succession, on and on and on) appears as President D. Wire Newman.

The equally wonderful and instantly recognizable Stephen Tobolowsky (Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day, The Goldbergs, Mississippi Burning, on and on and on) shows up as DARPA scientist Dr. Milkman.

And there's Bellamy Young (Scandal, Scrubs, We Were Soldiers) as the North Carolina representative trying to get the state's copy of the Bill of Rights back. Young's role on Scandal is just a part of the West Wing to Scandal actor pipeline (see: Joshua Malina, Jeff Perry, Liza Weil, etc, as well as character names Huck and David Rosen), as Scandal creator Shonda Rhimes is a big fan of The West Wing.

Libby Lassiter is played by Diana Douglas, who doesn't really ring a bell with me but was in over 800 episodes of the daytime drama Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing in the early 1970s. She also has been seen on The Waltons, The Paper Chase TV series, and has a blink-and-you'll-miss-her scene as the mother-in-law of Steve Martin's character in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Fun fact: Douglas was married to Kirk Douglas from 1943 to 1951, and is Michael Douglas' mother.

A nice callback to Glenallen Walken's time in office (played by John Goodman) when President Bartlet invoked the 25th Amendment during Zoey's kidnapping (Twenty Five through The Dogs Of War). While only President for a couple of days, he's included in President Lassiter's funeral arrangements.

And Bess!

We haven't seen Secretary of Defense Miles Hutchinson for a bit. He's back in the Situation Room.

Speaking of not seeing someone for a while, here's Leo's daughter Mallory, played by Allison Smith (the longest running Annie on Broadway). We met her first in Pilot, she had a flirtatious relationship with Sam in Season 1, but we haven't seen her around since Twenty Hours In America Part Two.

West Wing veteran director Alex Graves uses the tried-and-true camera-spinning-around-characters-talking technique quite a few times.

Col. Gantry is still the pilot of Air Force One, last mentioned in Disaster Relief and previously heard as the pilot in a couple of earlier episodes.

Leo is still wearing his wedding ring, despite his wife leaving him in Five Votes Down and his divorce coming through in The Portland Trip. It makes the scene where Mallory tells him about Jenny getting remarried even more poignant.

Meanwhile, Toby is not wearing a wedding band. At the start of the series Richard Schiff, unbeknownst to Aaron Sorkin, wore a ring as part of the widower backstory he created for Toby. Sorkin took that actor's choice and changed it into the storyline of Toby's former marriage to Congresswoman Andy Wyatt. Perhaps Toby has given up the ring as part of his pursuit of Andy and attempt to get her to remarry him.

Also, Toby's insistence that the United States should break off ties with Muslim nations like Saudi Arabia - "we should run away, as fast and as far away as we can" - is quite a change from his rant in Night Five that American democracy needs to defeat Islamic fundamentalism ("They'll like us when we win!").

President Newman brings up Bartlet's "illness" and the angry reactions to the announcement both he and President Lassiter had. We discovered President Bartlet was hiding his multiple sclerosis in He Shall, From Time To Time ..., and watched his staff learn the news throughout late Season Two until he revealed it to the nation in Two Cathedrals.

DC location shots

The final shot, with President Bartlet somberly considering President Lincoln's legacy at the Lincoln Memorial.

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

There are several direct references to former Presidents: obviously Abraham Lincoln, also George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman (the Truman battle group, which is a thing as the Truman Carrier Strike Group), and Woodrow Wilson.

There are also many Civil War references in this episode: Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth; Major Rathbone and Clara Harris, who were in Lincoln's box at the theatre when the assassination happened; generals Sherman, Grant, and Lee; the Emancipation Proclamation; General Order 100 (which did allow for Union soldiers to confiscate Confederate property, although there appears to not have actually been a Special Order 88), and the fact that North Carolina's copy of the Bill of Rights was indeed taken by a Union soldier near the end of the Civil War.

Several actual poems and songs are quoted, from The Charge Of The Light Brigade ("into the valley of death rode the 600") to The Battle Hymn Of The Republic ("mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord") to the M*A*S*H theme song Suicide Is Painless ("it brings on many changes").

When CJ asks about Pentagon mind control experiments, Toby responds with MK-Ultra, which was a CIA project that used drugs, electroshocks, and other forms of physical and mental torture in an attempt to manipulate subjects' mental state and brain function. The project was officially ended in 1973. The 1959 novel and 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate also is brought up in the discussion.

Josh mentions the Whalers a couple of times, meaning the Hartford Whalers, a WHA/NHL hockey team that played in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1974 to 1997. The team then moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and became the Carolina Hurricanes.

DARPA (and ARPA) are topics of discussion - originally founded as the Advanced Research Projects Agency and later renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA's research can claim at least partial credit for technological advances including the Internet, GPS, drones, weather satellites, and the Moderna COVID vaccine.

William Shakespeare is directly mentioned, as well as his character Lady Macbeth. We also have references to the authors Carl Sandburg, Herman Melville and Dante, plus a line from Charles Dicken's A Tale Of Two Cities ("tis a far, far better thing I do").

President Lassiter is compared to Attila the Hun. Toby refers to Lassiter's elderly administration members coming to the funeral as "Madame Tussaud's" (wax museum).

President Bartlet mentions the famed portrait artist Gilbert Stuart (one of his portraits of Washington is hanging on the Oval Office wall).

Leo says he has plans to meet Mallory at Oberdorfers. It sounds like he's taking her shopping, yet ... There was a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia named Louis Oberdorfer from 1977 until his death in 2013 - perhaps a family friend of Leo's? It's an interesting name to drop in to a West Wing script, in any event. There actually was a Christian Science Monitor article from 2002 that made a comparison based on moral relativism between President Bartlet's decision to kill the Qumari Defense Minister and a case before Judge Oberdorfer involving Exxon and its employees' rights violations in Indonesia, so somebody had already linked Oberdorfer and the TV series.

President Bartlet includes FedEx in his list of options to get a message to Crown Prince Bitar (along with fax and carrier pigeon).

Al-Jazeera is mentioned by Leo. CNN comes up a few times, and in addition to the by-now-familiar view of the MSNBC logo we get a rare glimpse of the CNN logo as well.