Walking And Talking And Yelling At Clouds: Message Of The Week

Original airdate: October 9, 2005

Written by: Lawrence O'Donnell (13)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (24)

Synopsis

Vinick switches up his campaign to focus on Latino issues and shake up a rapidly gaining Santos. Pressure from a conservative religious group gets Vinick in some hot water.

"I want to knock him off message without even mentioning his name."

There's an old saying (from the 19th century British historian Lord Acton), "Power tends to corrupt." I think a corollary of that saying is that even the pursuit of power can tend to corrupt some of the most upstanding, ethical people you can find - to the point where a principled candidate for President can flat-out lie to a group in order to get their support. That's the big takeaway I get from this episode, and while it's Arnie Vinick who panders and insinuates and, yes, just lies to George Rohr's face, we know this kind of corruption of ethical and moral standards isn't limited to just one party.

We begin right after Matt's Marine Reserve training, the training that ended The Mommy Problem. His "dedication to duty" in serving his country counteracted Vinick's edge in national security/defense matters, to the point of cutting Vinick's original 9-point lead (from The Ticket) down to 5 points. Josh is feeling the momentum (or the "Big Mo," whatever).

(Can I also mention the subtle contrast between the campaigns of an upstart long-shot, who barely survived the national convention, let alone getting the nomination, and the longtime California Senator with a staff and budget matching his position? Just look at the dry-erase white board in Josh's office that they use to track the polls in each state compared to Bruno's flashy magnetic state cutouts, one each in blue and in red.)

Santos' rise in the polling makes Vinick antsy - as his campaign staff sets out a schedule for his "message of the week," - homeland security and law enforcement - he wants to do something bold, something different, something unexpected that will knock Santos off his game.

Dan: "Go after the Latino vote?"

Bruno: "Mm-hmm."

(Leon and Bruno chuckle; Vinick sits silently considering)

Bruno (looking around the room): "Do ... do I actually have to say how insane that is?"

Vinick: "I've always won the Latino vote in California, why should I give up on that now?"

Bruno: "Well, let, let, let me think ... well, maybe because you're running against a Latino candidate who's going to get, about, 2000 percent of the Latino vote."

[...]

Vinick: "Bruno - if you're the Santos campaign, how would you respond?"

Bruno (sits, thinks, looks around; finally): "I don't know."

Vinick: "That's the whole point, knock him off his game, Santos will never know what I'm going to do next."

Vinick and his staff quickly change direction - they plan an appearance at the border, to highlight border security and immigration issues; then the Senator will introduce a bill creating a guest worker program, giving some migrants who crossed the border illegally a chance to stay in America and do the jobs Americans don't want to do, but need to be done. This swerve works as intended, particularly when Vinick uses a border appearance with the Minutemen (a private group patrolling the border to keep migrants out) to describe them as "vigilantes" who need to go home, a statement that Matt is forced to agree with. Josh and Matt continue to try to stick to their "message of the week" (momentum, mostly, along with national security in the wake of Matt's military training), but all the reporters want to talk about is the border and immigration. And Vinick's guest worker program is a policy Matt himself tried to introduce in the House a few years earlier, with no success, so now they feel attacked from the left. Matt begins to second-guess his longtime commitment to not playing off his Latino heritage, to not be "the brown candidate" (a point he first brought up in Opposition Research).

The Vinick maneuver exacts even more damage when the Senator brings up his support of the Central American Fair Trade Agreement, and sneakily highlights Santos' previous flip-flop on the bill (he voted for it in committee, but after it was amended and changed before being brought up on the floor, he voted against its passage). By late in the episode we find out Vinick has recovered from his drop in the tracking polls, and has rebounded to be ahead by as many as 12 points.

Lou (to Josh): "We just got our tracking."

Josh: "How bad?"

Lou: "We've got Vinick up by 12."

(A reporter walks up)

Reporter: "Hey. I hear Vinick's tracking has him up by 10."

Josh (exchanging a glance with Lou): "That's not what we have."

But all is not perfect in Vinick-land. Conservative religious groups, generally a voting bloc the Republican candidate can put in the bank, are rattled about Vinick's pro-choice stance on abortion. The choice of conservative, pro-lifer Ray Sullivan as the Vice Presidential candidate (In God We Trust) was meant to assuage those concerns, but the reverends of the American Christian Assembly want a guarantee that a President Vinick will nominate pro-life judges to the federal courts. An emissary from the assembly, George Rohr, comes by Vinick's office to lay down his group's position. Vinick tries to push off the responsibility to his Vice President.

Vinick: "I'm going to make the Vice President my point man on judges. You know Ray Sullivan."

Rohr: "Great man. Great governor. Going to make a great VP."

Vinick: "And you know that Ray shares your views on everything that's important to your organization."

Rohr (bitingly): "You mean, to my religion."

Vinick (pause): "Yeah."

You can tell Vinick really hates this pandering to religious groups (In God We Trust was all about him pushing back against the hold religion has over the Republican Party), and he especially hates it when Rohr basically accuses him of killing babies. In a meeting with no witnesses, we see Vinick ask Rohr if he can tell him something in confidence.

That turns out, we later find, to be a promise to appoint pro-life judges; a lie that Vinick has no intention of actually keeping.

Vinick: "Let Ray Sullivan talk to him, he knows how to talk to those people."

Sheila: "'Those people' can take this election away from you, so you'd better --"

Vinick: "I can't meet with him again."

Sheila: "Well, he somehow got the idea that you promised him approval of judges --"

Vinick: "That's because I did."

(Sheila and Bruno react)

Bruno: "You promised him judges?"

Vinick: "Yeah. I lied."

Word of the promise leaks - because of course it would - and Vinick and his staff have to scramble to try to clean up the damage. But even while that lie to the reverends is a hit to the campaign, it's a reaction to the swerve to Latino issues and the border and immigration - in a contest with an actual Latino candidate! - that ends up hitting Vinick in a personal way.

We meet Leon early on. He's a longtime Vinick staffer, who worked his way up from the mailroom to becoming a key member of the Senator's staff. His Hispanic background and connection with Latino issues proved invaluable to running Vinick's California operations for years - but this tactic of hitting Matt on his heritage really bothers Leon. We see it on his face when Vinick suggests the idea on the campaign plane; he speaks out against the idea of a photo op with the Minutemen ("You mean the vigilantes? [...] A bunch of nuts patrolling the border with guns? Someone's going to get hurt"); we see it again when Vinick is at the border, praising the Border Patrol. It eventually becomes too much, and while Vinick was trying to switch up his strategy to hit Matt from areas he'd never see coming, Arnie never saw this coming, either, as Leon hands him his letter of resignation:

Leon: "I never thought it was going to be Santos. He didn't have a chance at the nomination, now we're three weeks into this and I can't do it, I can't be working all day and night to beat the first Latino nominee for President. And now that we're using his heritage against him --"

Vinick: "That's not what I'm doing, I'm talking policy. That's fair."

Leon: "Please, Senator ... I was in the meeting."

Vinick: "If Santos is afraid to lead the country on these issues, then he doesn't deserve to be President. The voters have a right to hear from the Latino candidate about Latino issues, he ought to be way out ahead of me on this stuff."

Leon: "Twins are two and a half now. My mother in law just taught them how to say the word Santos. Someday they're gonna ask me what I did on this campaign ... I can't tell them I did this. Can't do it."

Suddenly the "Latino vote" gets very personal, not only for Matt Santos, but also for Arnold Vinick. And now we start to see the cost of that corruption in the pursuit of power, the fact that lying to get a group's support or pandering to an ethnic group isn't a free ticket to those votes. You have to pay a price.

Tales Of Interest!

- This is the second consecutive full-campaign-only episode, with no appearances by anybody back at the White House. We'll get back to the Bartlet administration in the next episode.

- The onscreen titles tell us we go through "Monday" and "Tuesday." This must be the week after Matt completed his Marine Reserve training, which we were told previously he started right around Labor Day, which was September 4 in 2006. That would make this Monday, September 11 and Tuesday, September 12.

If that is indeed correct, I mean (and given the fact Josh and others are explicit on the training scheduled "in two days, the Tuesday after Labor Day" in the previous episode) ... on the other hand, the characters also told us The Ticket came four days after the Democratic convention and The Mommy Problem was four days after that, which places Matt's Reserve training at about mid August, August 13th or so, and then this episode would be Monday and Tuesday August 21 and 22.

Or we go by the onscreen titles in The Ticket and The Mommy Problem that say the previous episode was 100 days before the election, which would be July 30, making this episode August 7 and 8.

For now, let's just go with the quite definite placement of Matt's training around Labor Day and say this episode puts us in mid-September, eight weeks before the election on November 7. This may be kind of dicey considering the series still has 12 episodes to come before we see the election (and 11 episodes before one titled Two Weeks Out), so ... once again time has no meaning in The West Wing universe.

- Okay, visual aids! I know I'm obsessing over the timeline missteps here, but it's just such an obvious dumb error that the writers stepped into with no reason. All they had to do is do the math properly, and everything would line up, but nooooo ...

Here are calendar pages from July through September 2006. The items I've added in blue line up with what we saw in Things Fall Apart, with the Republican convention happening when Leo's whiteboard said "178" days left until the inauguration. Items in green go with the "105/101/100 Days Until The Election" captions we saw in The Ticket and The Mommy Problem, which mean either the conventions happened earlier than in the Things Fall Apart timeline or the election isn't until mid-December. And the orange entries go along with the expressly no-doubt-about-it statement from The Mommy Problem of Matt's Reserve training coming up "in two days, the Tuesday after Labor Day," and therefore the "Monday" caption in this episode meaning that second week in September.

- Arnie Vinick's Secret Service code name is "Big Sur," as we hear in the opening scene ("Big Sur is on the move").

- Whoever came up with the graphic design for Vinick's campaign - especially the nearly unreadable design on his airplane - needs to be fired.

- Speaking of airplanes, there's something wonky with the aerial shots of the Santos aircraft.

The flight deck is on a different level from the passenger seats. Aircraft generally do not work that way, except for an exception I'll talk about in a minute. It also appears that an outboard jet engine has been photoshopped away (note there's an engine on the opposite side further out on the wing than on the wing nearest us).

I think the show used aerial footage of a B747 (likely for an Air Force One shot earlier in the series) and then digitally adjusted it into the Santos campaign plane. That would mean they smoothed out the "bump" on the top of the fuselage that B747s are famous for, but they left the cockpit on that level (which, on a normal aircraft, would be the very same level as the rest of the interior - airplanes that are not B747s do not have two stories). And then they also removed an engine, since B747s have four and almost all modern jetliners only have two. Here's an actual B747 indicating some of what I mean. The rows of passenger windows on this plane look exactly like the ones on Santo's jet, with the "second story" magically removed (except for the flight deck, of course). That's an awful lot of headroom and overhead space for carryon bags, just saying.

- This is the first time we see Josh realize Bruno Gianelli is running Vinick's campaign. In The Mommy Problem Joey Lucas actually suggested Josh hire Bruno to take some of the workload off his shoulders, and Bruno did, in fact, run President Bartlet's re-election campaign in Seasons 3 and 4. As viewers, we remember Bruno meeting with Vinick in In God We Trust, as Bruno believed Vinick was a better candidate (even as a Republican!) with more general appeal to the electorate. Anyway, Bruno comes by the Santos campaign HQ to talk debates, and as its the first face-to-face meeting between he and Josh since Bartlet's re-election, there's some tension in the air.

- I really like this shot, as a callback to so many West Wing compositions in the past. Directors on the series have really gotten enamored with showing characters speaking in front of a camera, but focusing more on their appearance on the in-scene TV screen rather than on the character right there in the scene. They used that a lot in briefing room scenes with CJ, for example. We get that in this interview snippet with Matt; also very telling that Josh is focusing on the TV screen. He wants to get the idea of how Matt comes across to the voters watching, not in what he's saying right there in the room. It's an elegant way of showing the ubiquity of television in today's politics and Josh's savvy in picking up on what matters for the election.

- Why'd They Come Up With Message Of The Week?

There's a lot of talk about the campaigns and their "messages" - the Vinick camp starts with homeland security as their message of the week, but pivots to immigration and the border to knock Santos off of his plans to focus on the economy and avoid what he thinks of as "brown/Hispanic" issues.

Quotes

(Bruno and Vinick are watching the attack ad Leon has brought them from the RNC)

Bruno (sharply): "Is this all you guys know how to do? Attack ads?"

Leon: "Hey ..."

Bruno: "Have you seen any of the ads I've written for this campaign? Anyone with half a brain --"

Vinick: "Leon's not with the RNC. He's one of us. He ran my California operation for years."

Leon (pointedly, to Bruno): "And I don't write TV ads. I leave that for the people with half a brain."

-----

(Vinick is taping the "I approve this message" tag with a room full of campaign staffers)

Vinick: "I'm Arnold Vinick, and I approved this message."

Bruno: "Stronger."

Vinick: "I'm Arnold Vinick, and I approved this message."

Bruno: "Softer."

Vinick: "I'm Arnold Vinick, and I'll be the nicest President ever, I promise."

-----

Sheila: "Just got you out of a meeting with the reverends."

Vinick: "God ... have I told you how much I love you?"

Sheila: "But you're going to have to do a meeting with George Rohr."

Vinick: "That vicious little ... geez, I'd rather meet with the entire American Christian Assembly."

Sheila: "No. You wouldn't. George is a political professional and the reverends follow his advice. You are going to be very nice to him."

Vinick: "You're the devil, aren't you. I have the devil running my campaign, don't I?"

-----

Bruno (to TV reporters after meeting with Josh): "We had a very productive meeting."

Reporter: "Did you agree on a format?"

Bruno: "No."

Reporter: "Did you agree on dates?"

Bruno: "No."

Reporter: "Did you agree on a number of debates?"

Bruno: "No."

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

Say hello to a new advisor on the Vinick campaign, Dan, played by William Russ (Wiseguy, Boy Meets World, a memorable appearance on Miami Vice). Also say farewell to Dan, he'll never show up again.

The CIA/NSC intelligence briefer, Charles Frost, is played by Tom Everett (Dances With Wolves, Air Force One, Picket Fences). He gets an entire episode named after his character next time!

Campaign strategist Bruno Gianelli (Ron Silver) is back and working hard on the Vinick campaign. We saw him play a key role in President Bartlet's reelection campaign in Seasons 3 and 4, but also saw him switching sides and starting to advise Senator Vinick in In God We Trust.

Longtime White House press room reporters Mark and Katie are seen out on the road, Mark covering Senator Vinick and Katie on the Santos plane.

George Rohr, who must have left the House of Representatives to be a liaison for the reverends of the American Christian Assembly (according to Dan's dialogue, I think), is played by Peter Mackenzie (Black-ish, Herman's Head, the canceled-too-early Don't Trust The B--- In Apartment 23).

And here I thought The Dogs Of War gave us the only restroom scene we ever had in The West Wing, with Josh going after Walken's aide while he's trying to take a leak. At least that's the only White House restroom scene ...

Then we get not one, but two bathroom-related scenes, with Sheila coming out of the women's room, talking on her phone headset. Sure, these two settings indicate the frantic world of political campaigns, where you can't take time off even to use the restroom, and you must "multi-task," as Vinick says ... but I mean, really?

The NSC intelligence advisor Frost tells Vinick there's a situation in Kazakhstan. This is the first we're hearing about it; it will not be the last.

George Rohr mentions Reverend Butler, one of the candidates Vinick defeated for the Republican nomination and who we saw in In God We Trust.

DC location shots

None. The scenes at the border and the Boeing plant would have been filmed in California (Boeing built the C-17 at their Long Beach factory in California).

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

Bruno tells Vinick that no Senator has won a Presidential election since 1960 (which was John F. Kennedy in reality). While this was true at the time, just three years after this episode, in 2008, Senator Barack Obama was elected President.

Several shots of MSNBC news coverage, including this on the TV in Vinick's limo:

Bram and Dan both talk about CNN and Zogby polls.

The photo op with the Minutemen highlights an actual vigilante group that patrols the Mexico-United States border. Bruno throws in, "Is there a local chapter of the Klan, maybe we can do a drop-by?"

The Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is a real program that passed the House of Representatives by one vote in July, 2005 (three months before this episode aired).

Catching Matt in the "he voted for it in committee, then voted against it on the floor" is a callback to John Kerry's words, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it," referring to a 2003 supplemental funding bill for US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kerry's reasoning was much like Matt's; the bill he voted for in committee funded the military by rolling back President George Bush's tax cuts, but when that bill was doomed to fail on the floor of the Senate Kerry voted against the bill that actually did pass, one that did not roll back the tax cuts.

Katie mentions stopping "Al Qaeda at the Rio Grande" when talking about Vinick's Border Patrol message to Lou. While the 9/11 attacks didn't explicitly happen in the West Wing universe, this makes it clear Al Qaeda does exist (and let's not forget Nancy McNally's reference to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I).

Newspapers mentioned include the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune. Bruno also brings up the Atlanta Constitution, but in reality that newspaper is called the Journal-Constitution.

Bruno calls up the Drudge Report website on Sheila's computer for the story about Vinick promising pro-life judges. The Drudge Report was a key online source for breaking political news in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While it still exists, its importance in the online realm has ebbed while other news organizations began to exploit the internet on their own.