Rhetoric converting into immediate action: the administration's inaugural language becomes doctrine and then orders (deployment to Khundu), producing personnel shifts and exposing the White House to political fallout.

Alone late in the Oval Office, President Bartlet flips through a wall of television images—tanks, an infomercial, the weather—until a VCR tape of wooden toy soldiers rewinds and plays. The …

In a cramped private room after the inauguration, President Bartlet ceremonially appoints Will Bailey Deputy White House Director of Communications, linking Will's military family pedigree to the gravity of the …

At the close of the inauguration sequence, President Bartlet and First Lady Abbey lead their senior staff through a crowded dance floor, cutting through the merriment in a deliberately staged …