In God We Trust - TWW S6E20

 

Original airdate: March 23, 2005

Written by: Lawrence O'Donnell (12)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (23)

Synopsis

• Questions of the separation of church and state cast a shadow over Senator Vinick as he locks in the Republican nomination, amid questions over his Vice Presidential choice and his own churchgoing. A bill to raise the debt ceiling and forestall an economic crisis is caught up in political wrangling over the minimum wage.
  

"If you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians you are just begging to be lied to." 

Religion and government have been inextricably linked since, well, religion and government have existed. There's just an irresistible urge to take the instilled faith-based rules-following of religion and apply it directly to governing your subjects ... and it's been a staple of human history from the beginning. Thanks to Enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Jefferson, the United States began with a rather bold approach - to separate church and state, to erect a "wall" of sorts between religion and government. The First Amendment, saying "Congress shall make no law" establishing any religion or restricting freedom to exercise one's religious rights, was groundbreaking in many ways. 

 

It's a good idea, especially for a diverse, growing nation with new citizens arriving from across the globe, all with different religions and different creeds and different beliefs. A government of such a nation should be established on evenhanded laws and rules that apply to all such citizens, and not restrict those citizens to have to live under the rules of one particular religion. In practice, though, it's been a challenge for American politicians to stick to that approach. The siren song of practicing one's Christianity through political means (and let's face it, it's almost always Christianity) is oftentimes too attractive to deny, and that's not even including the entry of pastors and reverends and other religious figures into politics themselves. It's hard for a preacher to run for office and then not, you know, continue to preach and try to use their newfound government power to enforce those religious precepts they have been urging their congregations to follow!

This is a conflict that's been with our nation from the beginning, the conflict between the "rightness" of religion and the messy freedoms of American life, and the political lure for religious leaders to use government to dictate that "rightness" to everyone, whether or not they actually follow that specific religion. It's always been a factor in the political landscape, sometimes coming to the forefront, sometimes pushed into the background - and we currently see it forced full front-and-center, with issues like abortion, banning certain books in schools, providing public funds for private religious schools, this month in particular being outraged about a Satanic Temple display sharing space with a Christian Christmas display in the rotunda of the Iowa Capitol, and denying the very humanity and personhood of those some don't agree with (LGBTQ students, for example). Even with the First Amendment and Jefferson's "wall of separation between the church and state," the United States can't seem to agree on that being the correct approach, and oftentimes wants to ignore those Enlightenment principles in order to impose religious ones.

All of that makes this episode not only ever-timely, but incredibly refreshing. Senator Arnie Vinick, a solid Republican conservative who has won the party's nomination for President in the upcoming 2006 election, is faced with somewhat of a dilemma - betray his own personal beliefs in order to pander to the anti-abortion right in the Republican base, and make a show of religion and churchgoing to get those votes, or stand strong on his own moral foundation, even if it doesn't align with the general religiosity of the party. He stays true to his own beliefs in this episode, in this West Wing universe, and we are meant to approve and appreciate his position - unfortunately, this type of stance has become vanishingly rare in today's politics. Which is what makes this refreshing, it's a sign of what could be, instead of what we are living through.

There's two tracks (well, three, kind of, but the third is linked to the other two) in this episode. We are closing in on the end of the season and the end of the primary campaign - in fact, the New Jersey primary that opens the episode feels like the final preliminary contest. While Vinick has locked up the Republican nomination, the Democrats are still a mess, with nobody earning enough delegates to ensure the bid going into the national convention in just a few weeks.

The big California win by Matt Santos that we saw in La Palabra lit a fire under his campaign, and with his narrow win in New Jersey he's fewer than a hundred delegates behind the frontrunner, Vice President Bob Russell. The other contender, former Vice President John Hoynes, cratered after his latest sex scandal blew up (also in La Palabra) and he's a distant third ... but with no one close to the 2162 delegates necessary, a lot of things can happen.

Toby in particular is worried and frantic about how much in disarray the Democrats appear to be, not even able to settle on a candidate for President (and we've seen in the past how little he thinks of Santos). In discussions with President Bartlet it's decided the President needs to step forward and show the country that the Democrats are currently head of the executive branch, and still know how to run the country - so he calls Santos and Russell in to the Oval Office for a photo op.

Toby: "You going to try to broker a deal between these guys?"

President: "Eh, not ready for that. Just a photo op. And remind people that we still know a little something about running the country."

Toby: "Maybe a little less about running a party." 

Once the press is gone, Bartlet lays down the law to the two candidates: no going negative, no attacks on each other, stay positive and stay focused on winning the general election, whichever of the two it might be.

 

In the background of all this is the debt ceiling, a limit which the government is fast approaching and needs raised before defaulting on its loans and causing a worldwide financial panic. Democrats float the idea of adding an amendment increasing the minimum wage to the debt ceiling bill, forcing the Republicans to vote to raise the wage or else crash the economy.

Charlie (on the debt ceiling bill): "It's a one-sentence bill. Just changes the seven to an eight."

Annabeth: "Trillion."

Toby (chuckling): "Yeah, trillion ..."

Annabeth: "Why does Treasury want the President to read over a 20-page memo on a one-sentence bill?"

Toby: "Well, they like to run the worst-case scenario."

Annabeth: "In case it doesn't pass?"

Toby: "Yeah, you know, the immediate collapse of the U.S. economy, followed by Japan sinking into the sea, followed by a worldwide depression the likes of which no mortal can imagine ... followed by week two."

The big focus of the episode, though, and the real good stuff inside, is all Vinick. Even with the Democrats fighting over their nomination and the debt ceiling crisis, this is a very Vinick-centric episode, and it earned Alan Alda an Emmy nomination.

With Vinick's clinching of the nomination, his immediate attention turns to picking a running mate. His main challenger in the primaries, Reverend Don Butler, is a staunch pro-life religious leader ... while his political positions don't line up that well with Vinick (a conservative, true, but a California conservative who still supports some abortion rights), Vinick's advisers tell him Butler as the VP candidate will bring the right wing of the party fully onboard with Vinick's candidacy and ensure a win in November.

Vinick is reluctant, but open minded. He knows Butler can lock up the White House for the Republicans, but he really wants to reach the independents and the more conservative Democrats, too. A surprising visit by Democratic campaign operative Bruno Gianelli (who ran Bartlet's 2002 campaign, remember) reinforces Vinick's own feelings on the situation.

Bruno (to Vinick): "Look - they don't know it yet, you are the best thing to ever happen to them. You're moving the Republicans away from the right wing. You're not saying Democrats are not patriotic; you're just saying that your approach is better than theirs. You are making politics a fair fight again. [...] I have spent the last twenty years ripping this country apart. Finding wedge issues to separate the voters. You don't have to do that to win. Not this time. You do this right, you can do a lot more than win. You can stop using politics to divide this country. You can show us how much we agree, instead of how much we disagree. You can put this country back together."

There's another very good option for VP, West Virginia governor Ray Sullivan, but he's not a pastor and not a guarantee to bring the far right into the fold in November. So when Butler comes to visit, Vinick can't resist the knowledge he would ensure the win, and he starts to offer him a spot on the ticket ... until Butler stops him.

It's a turn of events for us, the viewer ... we've been led to think of Vinick as someone solid in his beliefs, not a political flip-flopper, but suddenly we see he's willing to cave on some of his principles to get what he wants. It's Butler who stands firm and refuses to compromise, Butler who tells Vinick he can't serve alongside someone who supports abortion rights at all. Quite the reversal for us.

Then as Butler leaves Vinick's office, a reporter asked a different type of question - will he pray for Vinick to change his mind on abortion? Caught by surprise, Butler says yes, and then also says he'd welcome Vinick to come to his church to pray any time he wants to.

And therein lies the rub. Vinick, already viewed with suspicion by the religious right for his abortion stance, is now being publicly challenged to go to church, to make his Sunday morning religious practice a show for the news and for those religious voters. His staffers are generally in favor of doing that, of compromising yet again to fish for votes. But Sheila's hallway conversation with Bruno helps her see that's not the way to go - you can't try to run a political game on Rev. Butler to get his endorsement, he's not actually a politician (and as we saw, he's more certain of his noncompromising moral stance than Vinick is).

Senator Vinick's reasoning for not going to church is a deeply personal one. As his wife grew ill, he stayed home to care for her; after she died, he didn't want to go back to the church where her funeral was held (and there's an underlying unspoken message about losing some of his faith when that faith couldn't save his wife). Even so, out of the mouth of Sheila's young daughter comes the question that this churchgoing issue is going to bring to the forefront:

"Do you believe in God?"

Vinick doesn't really have a good answer for her (even though she says it's okay, one of her friends doesn't believe in God and she's cool).

Anyway, with Butler out the obvious choice is Governor Sullivan, and he's happy to be onboard, saying "I go to church enough for the both of us." But Butler's invitation continues to loom over the campaign like a giant shadow, trapping Vinick in a moral conundrum.

Then comes another invitation, one from the President himself. Vinick is summoned to the White House to try to work out a deal on the debt ceiling bill, as the midnight deadline draws near. The two political titans square off, with stern looks and strong words (in the DVD commentary writer Lawrence O'Donnell and director Christopher Misiano recall how difficult it was to get that tone on camera - Alda and Martin Sheen liked each other so much they had too much fun and too much camaraderie to get that tension onscreen). But Vinick has an offer, as long as he can get what he wants out of it - he'll split the minimum wage amendment off the debt ceiling bill, pass the debt ceiling increase, then get the minimum wage bill passed separately:

President: "What do you want from me?"

Vinick: "I announce the deal."

President: "I know a few Democratic candidates for President who wouldn't be happy watching you take credit for this."

Vinick: "Well, then, then let them pass the debt ceiling for you and get you the minimum wage increase."

Since that didn't take long, Vinick says he'll stick around so it looks like they're really hammering out a deal. And maybe, while they wait, could he have some ice cream?

Hence one of the memorable scenes in West Wing history. President Bartlet and Senator Vinick, in the back of the White House kitchen, hauling out five-gallon buckets of ice cream and talking about religion. 

 

(While it's a great scene, think of the health violations here, as both these guys dig into multiple containers of ice cream with their spoons, contaminating who knows how many gallons of the stuff.)

 

It's a tremendously well-written scene, with the staunch Catholic Bartlet and the somewhat agnostic Vinick really getting pretty deep into religion and politics and how they're connected and why they shouldn't be. This talk really becomes a turning point for Vinick, even as we get yet another story about why he doesn't go to church - this time he talks about a collectors' edition of the King James Bible he received as a gift, and how once he started reading it he really couldn't believe everything that was in there. And some of this reminds us of the verbal beatdown President Bartlet gave Dr. Jenna Jacobs in The Midterms.

Vinick: "It was a thrill just to hold it. Then I read it."

President: "You can't take it literally."

Vinick: "That's what my priest friends kept telling me. But the more I read it, the less I could believe. I could not believe there was a God who said the penalty for working on the Sabbath was death. I couldn't believe there was a God who said the penalty for adultery was death."

President: "I'm more of a New Testament man myself."

Vinick: "I couldn't believe that there was a God who had no penalty for slavery. The Bible has no problem with slavery at all. Lincoln could have used a little help from the Bible."

The President leaves Vinick with a little tidbit of advice that really gets to the essence of religion and politics, particularly the Presidency:

President: "The only thing you can pray for in this job is strength to get through the day. You can try coffee if you want, but prayer works better for me."

 

Vinick goes out on the White House lawn, to announce the deals on the debt ceiling and the minimum wage. When a reporter asks about Rev. Butler's invitation yet again, he first sticks to the simple, noncontroversial, noncommital response his staff told him to use:

Vinick: "I fully respect Reverend Butler's position. I mean, I appreciate his invitation, and, uh ..."

There's a pause. His talk with President Bartlet has spurred him to stick with his own moral position, however he arrived there - and to defend everyone's right to practice religion, or not, in their own way, and to criticize any effort to make any kind of religious test a requirement for public service.

 

Vinick: "Look, I respect Reverend Butler. And I respect his church too much to use it for my own political purposes. And that's exactly what I'd be doing if I went down there this Sunday, because the truth is it would just be an act of political phoniness. I may be wrong, but I, I suspect our churches already have enough political phonies in them."

(Reporters shout out questions)

Vinick: "I don't see how we can have a separation of church and state in this government if you have to pass a religious test to get in this government. And I want to warn everyone in the press, and all the voters out there - if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians you are just begging to be lied to. They won't all lie to you, but a lot of them will. And it will be the easiest lie they ever had to tell, to get your votes. So every day until the end of this campaign, I'll answer any question anyone has on government - but if you have, if you have a question on religion, please ... go to church. Thank you."

It is a fantastic statement defending the separation of church and state, clearly laying out where Senator Vinick stands, and defining where every American politician ought to be. They ought to be protecting the rights of all religions, all faiths, all beliefs (even nonbeliefs), not imposing some kind of Christian framework on questions of government action and enforcement of laws.

Too bad that didn't stick with us into 2023. Maybe we'll have Republican politicians like this back again, someday. Maybe.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- We have clearly moved on from the early spring/Super Tuesday primaries depicted in La Palabra and Ninety Miles Away and headed into the summer. We can tell because 1) the primaries are essentially finished with Senator Vinick locking up enough delegates to secure the Republican nomination and the Democrats having over 4200 delegates split between Vice President Russell, Representative Santos and former Vice President Hoynes, with only a few hundred left undecided; 2) the New Jersey primary is the hot topic, a primary which was held in June in 2004; 3) a couple of times it's mentioned the Democratic National Convention is a month away, a convention that always held in the summer (the 2004 DNC was in late July, the 2008 convention was in late August); 4) Sheila is trying to take her daughter to a baseball game (unknown whether they're talking about the Baltimore Orioles or the Washington Nationals, who played their first season in DC in 2005); and 5) most obviously, Charlie has grown facial hair since we last saw him talking about Leo's secret trip to Cuba. 

 

- The discussion in CJ's office about the debt limit - how Congress likes to hold off on a vote until the last minute, making legislators decide between voting for an increase or a government default, as well as preventing amendments - remains eerily accurate nearly 20 years later in our current world of 2023. Only thing is, unlike then, now we have Republican Congresspersons who are totally willing to let the government default while they make their own political points.

- Toby lists off the delegate count - Russell has 1677 delegates, Santos has 1599, and Hoynes is holding 956. With 2162 needed for the nomination and only a couple of hundred left undecided, there's still a lot to figure out.

- We see Sheila juggling her duties as Vinick's chief of staff and her responsibilities as a mother. There's a nice little moment in the limousine where she's on the phone with a staffer, but hands that phone over to Vinick as soon as one of her children calls with a homework question; then she retrieves the business phone from the Senator as soon as she's done. In the DVD commentary O'Donnell said his writing of Sheila's character was inspired by Sheila Burke, chief of staff for Senator Bob Dole and a friend of O'Donnell's when O'Donnell was working in the Senate - Burke had three children and also juggled family responsibilities with her work, much as we see here.

- There's something in Gail's fishbowl, but I can't quite tell what it is. It almost looks like a small jar of jelly or jam or something like that.

- If you pay attention during Vinick's talk to the press outside the White House, he answers a question on Reverend Butler with the exact four words (or is it five?) that Bob told him he needed to keep hammering to make the topic go away - "I fully respect Reverend Butler's position." Then, of course, he goes on to say a whole lot more, in one of the best little speeches in West Wing history.

 

- Alan Alda was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for this episode and King Corn. The award went to William Shatner for his role as Denny Crane in Boston Legal.

- Why'd They Come Up With In God We Trust?

It's the official motto of the United States, and its usage there shines a light on Senator Vinick's reluctance to use religion or belief in God as a political tool, as so many of his advisors believe he should.

Quotes    

Leo (watching Vinick prepare to give his victory speech): "We've got nobody who can beat him."

-----

Sheila: "Now these energy types that are going to be there tonight, obviously they're going to want to hear how you're voting on the energy deregulation bill."

Vinick: "Well, it depends on what's in it when it comes out of committee."

Sheila: "Sends a very bad message to the big contributors if you vote against it."

Vinick: "Hey, if you can't drink their booze, take their money, and then vote against them you don't belong in this business."

----- 

Vinick: "How do we spin this thing?"

Bob: "You say that you fully respect Reverend Butler's position that he's not interested in VP. In fact, you just keep repeating those four words - 'fully respect Reverend Butler's position.'"

Staffer: "Five words."

----- 

Vinick (talking to Sheila about church): "I used to go with my wife every Sunday I was in California, and when she got too sick to go I stayed home with her. (pause) And after her funeral I didn't want to go into that church again."

-----

Vinick: "You think the voter really needs to know if I go to church?"

President: "I don't need to know, but then I'm not gonna vote for you anyway. (pause) It's not up to us to decide what the voters get to use in evaluating us."

Vinick: "A little odd, coming from someone who wasn't exactly completely open about his health."

President: "That was a big mistake."

Vinick: "Was it?"

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

• This is the first we've heard of Reverend Don Butler (Don S. Davis, known for Stargate: SG-1, A League Of Their Own, Twin Peaks) as a candidate for the Republican nomination. We've previously known as candidates Glenallen Walken (Speaker of the House and acting President in Twenty Five through The Dogs Of War), and an "Allard" was mentioned in King Corn ... but that's about the only names we've heard mentioned before.

• Senate Majority Leader Robert Royce (H. Richard Greene) returns. He was first seen (as a member of the House, not the Senate) in On The Day Before, quickly became Senate Majority Leader by Jefferson Lives, and was most recently seen in Third-Day Story.

• Bruno Gianelli is back, and this time he's working for the Republican Vinick. Bruno (Ron Silver) famously was the top-notch campaign director hired by the Bartlet campaign to guide the reelection effort through the troubled waters of the MS disclosure, which he did quite successfully. Bruno's arc with the Bartlet campaign started with Manchester and he was last seen in Process Stories.

Bruno's party switch, and his professed reasons for supporting Vinick, are somewhat in opposition to his partisan, hit-back-harder approach he talked about in Gone Quiet.

Bruno: "Cause I am tired of working for candidates who make me think I should be embarrassed to believe what I believe, Sam. I'm tired of getting them elected. We all need some therapy, because somebody came along and said 'liberal' means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on defense, and we're gonna tax you back into the Stone Age because people shouldn't have to work if they don't want to. And instead of saying, 'Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave It To Beaver trip back to the fifties,' we cowered in the corner and said, 'Please don't hurt me.' No more. I really don't care who's right, who's wrong. We're both right, we're both wrong. Let's have two parties, huh?"

That doesn't sound exactly like a guy who's going to celebrate a Senator Vinick who's "pro-business" and "anti-tax," even if that's where most of the voters are. Ron Silver, of course, was a proud right-wing conservative as a person, even as he could portray liberals in a convincing manner onscreen - I don't know if that had anything to do with Bruno's switch or not.

• Our introduction to Vinick's running mate, West Virginia Governor Ray Sullivan (Brett Cullen, known for Falcon Crest, The Dark Knight Rises, Narcos, Person Of Interest), and a religious figure in his own right. 

• Leo's remark to President Bartlet about Vinick - "We've got nobody who can beat him" - is a reminder of his conversation with Josh in In The Room.

Josh: "Republican who wins California wipes us out in the electoral college."

Leo: "Right."

Josh: "He's not getting the nomination."

Leo: "If he does ... we've got no one who can beat him."

• We hear CJ call the Secretary of the Treasury "Madam Secretary" - we saw Treasury Secretary Karen Browning on TV in Third-Day Story.
  

• Toby talking about the networks loving the disarray at the upcoming convention reminds us of The Black Vera Wang when Toby was furious at the networks planning to cut back their coverage to just one hour total for each convention.
  

• When Vinick's staff is talking about which Democrat they'd rather face one staffer says, "Santos didn't even win his own state." In La Palabra we saw how much staying in the race until the Texas primary meant to Matt ... this is the first we've heard that he didn't win there. That also reminds us that the Bartlet campaign decided on John Hoynes as VP in order to win the South, yet Hoynes didn't bring along his home state of Texas in the general election of 1998.
  

• Governor Baker is mentioned by Sheila as vouching for Bruno. Eric Baker, governor of Pennsylvania, was the presumptive frontrunner for the Democratic nomination before he announced he wasn't running for personal family reasons in In The Room.
  

• When President Bartlet verbally spanks both Santos and Russell in the Oval Office, telling them to lay off the personal attacks or he might endorse the other guy, we are reminded that in Freedonia Matt Santos specifically refused to go on the attack at all, and only conduct a positive campaign about his own policies.
  

• As they chow down on ice cream Vinick asks President Bartlet, "How's your health?" to which Jed replies, "Good days and bad days." Vinick later points out the fact that President Bartlet wasn't completely open about his health while running for President. This is a reference to President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis, which has been an underlying issue ever since we first found out about it in He Shall, From Time To Time ... and has been more evident since A Change Is Gonna Come.

DC location shots    

• There aren't any, but once again we see the Los Angeles City Hall standing in for what is supposed to be the US Capitol. The City Hall building has been used numerous times before, including Swiss Diplomacy, A Good Day and tons of other times.

• We also get an establishing shot of what is supposed to be the Senate Office Building containing Senator Vinick's office. Thing is, though, that's actually the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency on 12th Street NW, across the street from the Old Post Office and closer to the White House than it is to the Capitol. Funny thing, too, not only did they use that building as the place where Donna was giving her deposition in War Crimes ... but it's the exact same B-roll establishing shot, reused from four years prior.

This is from War Crimes

This is from this episode - obviously the exact same footage.

 

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

• Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" is heard playing at the Vinick victory party.
  

• Reverend Butler is based on Republicans like Pat Buchanan or Reverend Pat Robertson who ran for president on far-right religious platforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That has continued for Republicans in more recent years with candidates like Mike Huckabee or Mike Pence, for example.
  

• CJ asks Toby if he's seen Broder's column. That would be David Broder of The Washington Post (we see a blurry front page of the Post held by CJ).

• Bruno mentions that a Republican presidential candidate has won 49 states twice in the last 30 years (which would be going back to 1976). In reality, it happened in 1972 (Richard Nixon won every state except Massachusetts [and the District of Columbia]) and in 1984 (Ronald Reagan won every state except Minnesota).
  

• We see some TV screens with MSNBC and C-SPAN2.

MSNBC

C-SPAN 2

• As the President and Vinick talk about the minimum wage bill, Vinick says California's minimum wage is "a buck fifty higher" than the federal minimum wage. In 2005 the federal minimum wage was $5.15 per hour, while California's was $6.75 - $1.60 higher. By the way, even that $5.15 wage in 2005 would equate to $8.29 in 2023 dollars, while the current federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2010.

• Vinick brings up Presidents Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, and FDR as examples of candidates who didn't feel the need to answer health questions.
  

End credits freeze frame: The President and Senator Vinick meeting in the Oval Office.

Previous episode: Ninety Miles Away

Next episode: Things Fall Apart

Ninety Miles Away - TWW S6E19

 

Original airdate: March 16, 2005

Written by: John Sacret Young (4) 

Directed by: Rod Holcomb (1)

Synopsis

• Leo tries to make up for the mistakes of the past with a long-shot bid to negotiate an end to the embargo with Cuba. Kate's past in the CIA (and with Leo) catches up to her, sort of. Charlie has to deal with exterminators and entomologists in the White House.
  

"Cuba ... it scums everybody it touches." 

Well, here we are. The episode widely regarded as one of the worst in West Wing history - if not the worst. Sure, people hate Access (but at least they were trying something different format-wise, I give partial credit for that) and others hate The Long Goodbye (which is a decent episode of TV drama, it's just not really a West Wing episode). Others dislike Eppur si Muove (the Muppets!) or Jefferson Lives (ooh, fireworks! And Jed sullenly refusing to push back on his VP choice!) or Abu el Banat (weird CGI Christmas trees! And the Bartlet grandson getting miraculously younger!) or An Khe (Vietnam flashbacks!) for various reasons (usually because they're kind of boring and the plotlines really don't matter) ... but for my money, nothing sinks quite so low as this one.

 

To quote Saturday Night Live's Stefan, this episode has everything - from an unnecessarily convoluted setup to get Leo to Cuba, to the President making an unnecessarily politically toxic decision at maybe the worst possible time of his administration, to superspy Kate with her sort-of-clandestine meetings with an old CIA compatriot, to CJ realizing even she doesn't have the clearance to see Kate's FBI records, to termite guys snooping around the Oval Office and trying to drill holes in the Mural Room for comic relief, to the unintended hilarity of John Spencer and Mary McCormack wearing ridiculous wigs in an attempt to look like it was 1995. Not only that, we get a retcon of when Leo was Secretary of Labor and when he went to rehab (it was 1993 since Season 1, all of a sudden it's now 1995 and under an entirely different administration) - and, once again (as in the Gaza/NSF Thurmont/The Birnam Wood arc), we're treated to this fictional show trying to solve complex real-world political problems in a highly simplified and unworkable scenario that hardly even makes sense in a 48-minute TV drama writing framework.

 

Now, we do get the wonderful Brian Dennehy in a couple of scenes as a boozy Florida Senator, and Charlie getting baffled at the choice between exterminating termites or studying them (leading CJ to tell him, "Just kill the damn bugs"), but that's not even close to saving this mess of an episode.

Let's start with the convoluted setup to get Leo to Cuba. Word is leaking out that Fidel Castro's health might finally be leading to his removal from power soon, and the President and Leo decide on a high-stakes trip to Havana to meet with the Cuban leader over easing embargo restrictions on the island. Okay, that's fine ... but the cover story is basically an homage to Ernest Hemingway, as we discover both Jed and Leo are big fans of his writing, and Leo read all of Hemingway's works while he was in rehab in 1993 (oh, sorry, 1995, I guess), and so Leo is going to Cuba to visit Hemingway's house there outside Havana. Which might be a decent cover if Leo was actually permitted to travel to Cuba at all - it wouldn't matter if his stated purpose was visiting Hemingway's farm or touring the sugar cane fields or actually meeting with Castro, he wasn't supposed to be going there legally in the first place. So that whole Hemingway setup in the cold open was just kind of dumb.

Although it did give us the chance to get a lovingly composed shot of a typewriter:

(Obviously the show didn't go to Cuba to film at Hemingway's actual house, so this isn't actually Hemingway's typewriter, so what's the point of this shot?)

Naturally, somebody blabs about Leo, and when word gets to the population of rabidly anti-Castro Cuban emigres in Florida it's going to be a whole thing. They're going to attack the Bartlet administration for being soft on Castro and Communism, and with the Florida primaries right around the corner, the Democratic candidates are going to bear the brunt of that furor. We also get the blustery, boozed-up Florida Senator Rafe Framhagen on the scene, threatening Cliff (and later Leo) over making any concessions to the Cuban dictator ... and he also makes some sideways references to Kate being involved somehow.

How is Kate involved somehow? Good question - and it's never really resolved. What we do kind of find out through conversations with one of her fellow CIA spies is that her first CIA assignment was in Florida in 1995, apparently monitoring either a meeting of veterans from both sides of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion or the ongoing vote recount of an anti-Castro Representative Cabrera's election to the House, or both. When Leo brings up the necessity of reaching out to Cuba and trying to improve relations by easing the embargo, and how he feels he messed it up in 1995 by getting drunk and missing some important meetings, Kate lets him know it didn't matter - the CIA would never had let it happen then. So, some pretty important high-level secret skulduggery was going on with Kate and the CIA subverting some administration initiatives back then ... but again, not much resolution or closure on that.

This does bring us to the closing flashback, back to Florida in 1995. A pre-rehab Leo (Secretary of Labor at the time, he says) is stumbling drunk, looking for his car, and missing an important chance to make some kind of deal with the Cuban government, given the attendance of Cuban military types at the Bay of Pigs reunion. Kate just happens to be hanging around in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette and nursing a black eye, for some reason. And this is where we get the unintentional hilarity of some freaking awesome wigs, with the scene shot mostly in shadow to help hide the fact they're trying to make Kate and Leo look so much different ...

Not to mention the attempt to make John Spencer look ten years younger (which is difficult, given the fact that Spencer looked 58 years old for most of his life).

By the way, this is what John Spencer actually looked like when filming The Rock in late 1995/early 1996 ... not much different from how he appears in The West Wing, but they decided to give Leo a much shaggier head of hair in this flashback.

Anyway, even with the Florida Cuban-Americans up in arms over this rapproachment with Castro, and the Presidential candidates having to deal with the fallout, and the CIA maybe not on board with the plan, President Bartlet goes on TV to tell his story about Kennedy's cigars and make his pitch for improving relations, and ... well, that's it, I guess. The entire Hemingway/Castro/Framhagen/1995 sneaky spy flashback thing just lands with a wet thud, and it's over. Ugh.

Let's not forget Charlie's dealings with the termite people, either. Wait ... the script and the show itself seems to want to forget Charlie's dealings with the termite people, as that B plot exists for absolutely no reason. So yeah, we'll forget that, too.

From here on in the series we turn mostly to the campaign trail, which is far more engrossing and entertaining than whatever this is. We also get quite the turn of events with a leak of classified information within the White House, with earthshaking results for some long-time staffers. That's all to come, as we bring Season 6 to a close and roll into the final Season 7.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- At the beginning of the episode we see Leo change the number on his white board from 330 to 329. 

 

Remember, as we first saw in 365 Days, he's using the board to count down the remaining days of President Bartlet's presidency, until January 20, 2007. That means this episode is around February 24 or 25, 2006 ... which makes no sense when the previous episode showed us the events of the Super Tuesday primaries, which seem to have been set in early March. The Florida primaries (where we are told the candidates are apparently campaigning) have not been part of Super Tuesday since about 1996, and generally take place a week or so later, which would be mid-March. Toby later says the South Carolina and Florida primaries are a couple of weeks away, which again would fit with a late-February setting ... but we can't ignore the fact that Super Tuesday has already happened.

 

Of course that doesn't mean there can't be a different primary calendar in The West Wing universe. BUT ... things like this are simply unforced errors. There's nothing in the script or the plot that requires the numbers 330 and 329 be shown on Leo's white board - they could be anything. 329 days before January 20, 2007, was not even a Monday morning, as we're shown here, but Saturday, February 25, 2006. All they had to do was have Leo change that number from 314 to 313, and we're at Monday, March 13, 2006 - a simple fix, but they couldn't even be asked to look at a calendar and do that.

- Real-life political leaders are only rarely mentioned on The West Wing - there's been Qaddafi and Yassir Arafat and Queen Elizabeth, that's about it - but they're never shown. Until now, with the shadowy image of a man obviously meant to be Fidel Castro smoking a cigar in his military fatigues waiting to meet Leo.

- The timing of Leo's drunken meeting with Kate and his eventual decision to go to rehab does not match up with what we've been told before. In The Short List we learned he had been in rehab "six years ago," while he was Secretary of Labor, and in Take Out The Trash Day he told Karen Larson he hadn't had a drink in "six and a half years" (which turned out not to be true when we saw he had relapsed and gotten drunk before the final Presidential debate in 1998 in Bartlet For America). Both of those descriptions put his rehab stint in 1993. Now we are told Leo was still drinking during the Bay of Pigs veterans' reunion in 1995, where an undercover Kate saved him from trying to drive drunk, and he was still Secretary of Labor (as he tells CJ) - and that it was this drunken few days and his failure to make a deal with Cuba that convinced him to "dry out for 30 days" in rehab.

I don't know why the discrepancy. Again, don't these writers keep a bible of things that've already been told in the series, so they don't mess up timelines? Was it just because 1993 was too early for Kate to have started her CIA career? Or was it because they didn't think they could make John Spencer look 13 years younger, but they'd settle for trying for 10?

(This also really complicates the backstory of where previous Presidents and administrations fell before Bartlet was elected in 1998. When we were originally told Leo was Secretary of Labor in 1993, that made sense with a Democratic President who was replaced by a Republican in 1994. Now, with Leo still apparently in the Cabinet in 1995, that would have to be under Bartlet's predecessor, who was definitely a Republican, as noted by Supreme Court Justice Crouch in The Short List - "I waited five years for a Democrat.")

- President Bartlet and others are concerned about how news of a possible lifting of the Cuban embargo might hurt the candidates in the upcoming Florida vote. "If this comes out, we can bring out the shovels and bury the Democratic candidates in that little fiesta," Jed says. It's the primary, not the general election, and while this news might buoy the Republicans over the Democrats, that shouldn't matter as much in a primary. 

- When Toby sees Rep. Cabrera on the TV, he says he's served seven or eight terms. Later we hear about the controversy over the recount of Cabrera's election in 1995, which would be from the 1994 election - if that had been his first term, he'd be running for his seventh term now in 2006.

- The show used copies of actual FBI files to stand in for Kate's files. The first pages refer to Judith Campbell, who claimed to be a mistress of President Kennedy and several mobsters and referred to here an associate of "underworld figures" Sam Giancana and John Roselli, and her phone calls to the Kennedy White House in November 1961.

 

The heavily redacted page has handwritten references to 1944.

Clearly odd for someone whose first CIA posting wasn't until 1995.

- While there's not a lot of directorial magic going on in this episode, we do get a split-diopter shot of Kate and CIA director Rollie in the Situation Room. A split-diopter shot is kind of like having two lenses in the same camera, so subjects both near and far can be in focus.

- Gail's fishbowl appears to just have white gravel in the bottom, which may be a reference to white-sand beaches in the Caribbean.

- Why'd They Come Up With Ninety Miles Away?

While it's actually 94 miles from Key West to the northern shore of Cuba, rounding down to 90 miles makes things simpler. Also when CJ asks Kate how she found out about Leo being in Cuba, she responds, "It's 90 miles away, it's like driving to Baltimore." And President Bartlet, in his speech to the nation, emphasizes that Cuba is only 90 miles away.

Quotes    

CJ: "See? You do know the Senator."

Cliff: "What's not to know? Brilliant, bilious, impossible - fires staffers for putting paper clips backwards on briefs."

CJ: "Which way on a paper clip is backwards?"

-----

Framhagen: "When Leo was Chief of Staff, I could heckle him a little. We used to bend our elbows together right in this room, down home, back when. Now he's gone ... probably only that NSA gal."

Cliff: "Gal?"

Framhagen (sharply): "You like repeatin' things, son?"

Cliff: "I seem to be getting good at it."

----- 

CJ: "You saw the Senator."

Cliff: "I'm full of vitamin C."

CJ: "Nothing stronger?"

Cliff: "I think his orange juice was spiked."

CJ: "What'd he want?"

Cliff: "I'm not really sure."

CJ: "Not really sure."

Cliff: "This repeating thing must be contagious."

-----

President: "Let's put together a fail-safe response on how and what to announce about Castro's health, about Leo's trip, then find out public reaction, Congressional reaction, and the candidates - what to do about its impact on the primaries and the general election, and Cuba's response, for that matter."

CJ: "How soon?"

President: "How about the end of the day."

----- 

Leo: "Younger Cuban-Americans don't care. The Cuba effect on Florida's going away, too much utilizing."

Framhagen: "Mmm, so for the younger Cuban-Americans, your solution is to have an old man with MS send another old man who's had a heart attack to check on the health of a third old man, a man who could be, should be, and God willing soon will be, dead."

-----

Framhagen: "We were close once ... back then."

Leo: "No ... Senator, we just drank back then. We were never close."

  

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

• CIA director Rollie (Ryan Cutrona) is back in the Situation Room. Rollie has been the CIA director as far back as Lord John Marbury.
  

• Brian Dennehy (First Blood, Cocoon, Silverado, F/X, The Blacklist, etc, etc) is seen as Florida Senator Rafe Framhagen. Oddly, IMDB credits the role as "Framingham," but he's clearly called "Framhagen" in the dialogue.

• The bug guys looked familiar to me: Kevin West (The O.C., Scrubs, Gone In 60 Seconds) is the one holding up the pictures:

And P.J. Byrne (Babylon, Big Little Lies, The Boys) is the fellow with the ant anatomy chart.

• The older background actor with the white hair and the buzzcut that shows up in many, many episodes is seen once again.

• Leo's whiteboard from 365 Days is back ... and the first two columns on the board are indeed the same ones we saw written back in that episode (Health Care and Latin America).

• Reporters Katie, Mark, and Steve are all seen in the briefing room.
  

• Leo's rehab stay at Sierra Tucson comes up (that's where he spent his time reading all of Hemingway's works). We first learned of his rehab in The Short List ... although, as mentioned above, the timing doesn't exactly work out with what we see in this episode.
  

• The President tells CJ that he had started secret exploratory talks in Canada with representatives of the Cuban government "before you were Chief of Staff." Earlier, with Leo, he says that groundwork has been being laid for "a year, but who's counting." CJ became Chief of Staff in Liftoff, which was the summer of 2004. This is February/March of 2006, which is a full year and half since then, and the talks with the Cubans had to have been ongoing before that, so ... again, the timelines don't match up. 
  

• Leo says Castro had seen President Bartlet pitch at the Orioles game. We saw the President throw out the first pitch at Camden Yards on Memorial Day 2004 in the aptly entitled Memorial Day.

• The reporters bring up some facts we saw in La Palabra - Katie says that "Hoynes' campaign may be collapsing" and Mark mentions Santo's "surprising victory in California." Again, this is clearly after Super Tuesday, so we must be into March, which is fewer than 329 days until January 20.
  

• CJ tells Margaret to make the request to get Kate's top-secret file and "forge my signature - you can do the President's." It was In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II where we learned that little fact:

Margaret: "I can sign the President's name. I have his signature down pretty good."

Leo: "You can sign the President's name?"

Margaret: "Yeah."

Leo: "On a document removing him from power and handing it to someone else."

Margaret: "Yeah! ... Or, do you think the White House Counsel would say that was a bad idea?"

Leo: "I think the White House Counsel would say it was a coup d'etat!"

Margaret: "Well. I'd probably end up doing some time for that."

Leo: "I would think. And what the hell were you doing practicing the President's signature?"

Margaret: "It was just for fun."

Leo: "We've got separation of powers, checks and balances, and Margaret vetoing things and sending them back to the Hill."

• Kate told us in 365 Days that she'd been married and divorced "a couple of times" - in Drought Conditions we discovered one of her ex-husbands went to the same gym as Charlie, and now her former CIA partner says he'd ran into another ex-husband who is "still down there" - in Florida, I guess.
  

• With the campaigns still going on, we see a TV graphic about Vice President Russell having a six-point lead over Santos in Florida, and that Senator Vinick and former Speaker Walken are still competing for the Republican nomination. There's also a mention of Santos' California win and Hoynes' flame-out, which solidly places this episode after the events of Super Tuesday in La Palabra.
  

• Framhagen brings up the point that President Bartlet is suffering from MS, a plot point that has been with us in varying degrees since He Shall, From Time To Time ... He also refers to "an old man who's had a heart attack," by which he means Leo - we saw his heart attack at Camp David in The Birnam Wood, and his medical rescue in Third-Day Story.
  

• Leo still wears his wedding band, even though his wife left him in Five Votes Down and his divorce was finalized in The Portland Trip.

DC location shots    

• None. I don't know where the scenes supposedly at Hemingway's Cuban residence were shot, or why that one typewriter gets a lingering lovingly framed shot ... IMDB lists only the Warner Brothers studio lot for filming of the episode.
  

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

• Lots of real-life people are mentioned in this episode, from Ernest Hemingway to Fidel Castro, to Graham Greene and Charles McCarry (authors Charlie knew Leo liked to read), to William Jennings Bryan (Jed compares Castro's long-windedness to him), to John F. Kennedy and Pierre Salinger (with the cigar caper), to Abigail Adams to Che Guevara (Donna says Castro has become Che, which is more than ironic).
  

• The Hemingway quote President Bartlet reads in the open - "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially" - is from A Farewell To Arms.
  

• When Leo arrives at Hemingway's house in Cuba he is welcomed to "la finca de Senor Mr. Hemingway." "Finca" means "farm" in Spanish, and Hemingway's residence outside Havana is called Finca Vigia. Charlie later mentions Hemingway homes in Idaho and Key West "with the six-toed cats," both of which do exist.
  

• President Bartlet's story about President Kennedy dispatching Pierre Salinger to secure 1200 Petit Upmann cigars from Cuba just before imposing a trade embargo actually happened.
  

• The failed Bay of Pigs invasion was a real historical event, in 1961.
  

• CJ quotes "Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day" from the musical Oklahoma at Cliff.
  

• Cliff tells Sen. Framingham that he'll take a Diet Coke instead of the (spiked) orange juice offered.
  

• Cliff compares the constant reports of Castro's poor health to a Marx Brothers comedy.
  

• MSNBC and CNN are referenced. 

• The burning of the White House in 1814 comes up with the termite researchers, although the mention of Abigail Adams doesn't make sense when Dolley Madison was the First Lady at that time.
  

• Speaking of discovering the mysteries of the White House by going inside the walls, the entire interior of the building was gutted and rebuilt between 1948 and 1952. There'd be little to discover from any time before that.
  

• Kate says she and her mother were living at the Key West Naval Base when her father was off with the Pacific Fleet. There's a Key West Naval Air Station, that must be what she's referring to.
  

• A logo for the Florida State University Seminoles is seen in Senator Framhagen's office.
  

End credits freeze frame: CJ and Leo talking in CJ's office.

Previous episode: La Palabra

Next episode: In God We Trust