Abrupt Exit — Doctrine Questioned, Answers Deferred
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Bartlet exits, ending the scene on a note of unresolved tension.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Not present; projected as breezy and informal through others' lines.
Spoken of in the room as a comic foil; referenced by Bartlet and Will in a teasing exchange about removing pants — he is not physically present in this moment but his persona shapes the banter.
- • As referenced, to serve as shorthand for casualness and humanize the conversation.
- • To provide a rhetorical contrast to the high-stakes policy language being discussed.
- • Colleagues are comfortable enough to use offhand humor to defuse tension.
- • Informality can coexist with serious policy debates in staff culture.
Playful and sardonic on the surface, shifting into genuinely probing moral seriousness; ultimately amused but testing.
Enters Will's office, knocks on the frame, picks up Will's speech from the desk, reads aloud its language aloud, presses Will with a blunt moral question, makes a teasing personal aside invoking Tom Bailey, then exits without resolving the policy exchange.
- • To test the moral logic and rhetorical consequences of Will's draft.
- • To gauge Will's seriousness and willingness to stake his job on the language.
- • To provoke a candid admission about unequal valuation of foreign lives.
- • Words in an inaugural address must reflect moral clarity, not merely rhetoric.
- • Valuing lives unequally is a consequential stance that must be questioned.
- • Personal lineage or connections (e.g., Tom Bailey) can illuminate motive or temperament.
Absent; his name functions as an insinuation about inherited temperament and military vigor.
Invoked by Bartlet as a personal reference point—Will is asked if he's Tom Bailey's son—using family lineage to probe Will's motives and temperament, though Thomas Bailey is not present.
- • As referenced, to act as a shorthand for military steadiness and rhetorical boldness.
- • To clarify whether Will's aggressiveness is personal conviction or inherited posture.
- • Family pedigree can illuminate political instincts.
- • Military stature confers a certain moral seriousness and bluntness.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The inaugural draft is physically lifted from Will's desk by Bartlet; it functions as the catalytic prop that transforms banter into moral interrogation. The document's line about values and the value of Khundunese lives is read aloud and becomes the focal proof-text for the ethical exchange.
Will's desk serves as the staging surface for the draft and the immediate locus of the encounter. It anchors the private meeting, supports the prop (the speech), and delineates the conversational boundary between the President and his aide.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Republic of Equatorial Khundu is not physically present but operates as the ethical and narrative locus of the draft's argument. Khundu's humanitarian crisis is the moral lever Bartlet uses to interrogate the draft's implied hierarchy of human value.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
The Khundunese (as the people of Khundu) are the human subject of the inaugural draft's moral claim; their suffering anchors the ethical test Bartlet poses. The organization/people are invoked rather than represented by spokespeople, serving as the moral measuring-stick for U.S. values.
The 'Americans' function as the comparative benchmark in Bartlet's question: the draft implies American lives are valued more. As an organization/collective, Americans are the referent whose protection shapes the administration's instincts and rhetorical posture.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Will's reading of the old Bartlet speech directly influences Bartlet's reflection on the moral dilemma of valuing Khundunese lives."
"Will's reading of the old Bartlet speech directly influences Bartlet's reflection on the moral dilemma of valuing Khundunese lives."
"Zake's question about racial bias echoes in Bartlet's later reflection on why a Khundunese life is valued less than an American life."
Key Dialogue
"BARTLET: "Yeah. What's hard is that foreign policy has become a statement of what we won't do.""
"BARTLET: "Why is a Khundunese life worth less to me than an American life?""
"WILL: "I don't know, sir, but it is.""