Mr Willis Of Ohio

[Admin]

From NBC:
Toby (Richard Schiff) and Mandy (Moira Kelly) work to convince some congressmen -- including the nervous Mr. Willis (Al Fann), who assumed his late wife's office -- to approve a commerce bill that includes a vital census-counting provision. The President's daughter, Zoey (Elizabeth Moss) gets into an ugly fracas in a Georgetown bar along with Josh (Bradley Whitford) and Sam (Rob Lowe). Elsewhere, C.J. (Allison Janney) swallows her pride and asks Sam for help to understand the basic components of the administration's stance on random census-taking in 2000, and a peeved President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) scolds Leo (John Spencer) when he learns that Leo's wife has left him.

[Joey Lucas]

From The Official Companion:

It’s a late night in the White House, and the senior staff is playing poker. C.J. deals seven-card stud but President Bartlet is distracted. He’s insisting on mining his inexhaustible reserve of cerebral trivia. He says there’s only one fruit with seeds on the outside (the strawberry). There are fourteen punctuation marks in standard English grammar (period; comma; colon; semicolon; dash; hyphen; apostrophe; question mark; exclamation point; quotation marks; brackets; parentheses; braces; and ellipses). There are only three words that begin with the letters “dw.” “Dwindle,” says Sam. “Dwarf,” says Toby. He racks his brain for the last. With a nudge from the President, he dredges up “dwell.” As Bartlet wins the hand and the game breaks up, the Secret Service calls a security alert. The building is not secure and everyone stands right where they are until the all-clear is given. Mandy declares this never happened at her last job.

As a new day dawns on the West Wing, Toby calls out to the communications bullpen for a copy of Article 1, Section 2. “Of what?” Bonnie (Devika Parikh) asks. “The Constitution,” Toby says dryly, as if it could be anything else. Undiscouraged by her apparent uselessness in this situation, Bonnie asks if it’s still in print. Toby says if Amazon.com doesn’t have it, she can go bust it out of the glass-encased display in the Archives.

Over the phone, Sam is saying the President will veto the Commerce Bill if it prohibits using sampling data in the 2000 census. As he hangs up, C.J. sidles up: she says she like the way Sam said that. And he’s looking good these days. Sam’s not convinced of her sincerity, and C.J. fesses up. She says she doesn’t quite understand the census. Any of it. She’s been commenting on the bill to the press for three weeks, but she’s been faking her knowledge the whole way.

Donna’s waxing philosophical, and proposes to Josh that the root of all politics is economics. In terms of the budget surplus, she’s right in thinking the Republicans want to give it back in tax relief, but we don’t. No, says Josh, we’re Democrats we want to spend it. Donna demands her money back.

The staff is perusing the latest Appropriations Bill, which includes such allocations as $12 million for an Appalachian Transportation Institute and $2 million for a volcano monitor in Alaska. Mandy reports they’re looking at three swing votes on the Commerce Committee. If the committee drops the sampling prohibition, the Appropriations Bill passes the President and Congress without a problem. The swing votes are key: two of the three are Gladman and Skinner, and the third is the late Congresswoman Janice Willis’s husband. Toby presumes Mr. Willis will do what he’s told. He predicts that they can be brought around quickly – everyone wants to get out of town for the three-day weekend.

Ron Butterfield (Michael O’Neill), part of the President’s Secret Service detail, briefs Bartlet about the security breach. A mentally unbalanced woman in her forties got onto the White House grounds, brandishing a gun. Bartlet remains calm until he hears that she wasn’t after the President, her target was Zoey. Leo has been meaning to tell Bartlet about Jenny leaving him but knows this isn’t the time. He’s afraid of how his old friend will react. The burgeoning emotional crisis might prove too much for Bartlet to handle.

Determined to push the Commerce Bill through, Toby, Josh, and Mandy are elucidating the administration’s case to Gladman, Skinner and Willis in the Roosevelt Room. The pork-stuffed Appropriations Bill is 7,000 pages long and weighs fifty-five pounds. If the anti-sampling amendment is attached, a bill that size is sure to get stuck in the system for a long time. It’s the standard political game: a combination of chess and chicken. One of the players in a rookie, Congressman Joe Willis (Al Fann), a quiet African American man in his fifties. Mr. Willis, a former social studies teacher, only took his wife Janice’s seat a month before, and he still appears to feel out of place in his surroundings. Toby tries to put everyone on the clock, saying he’s sure they want to get home for the weekend. Mr. Willis interrupts, saying he’s in no hurry. They should take their time.

As their cronies hammer the congressmen, Sam school C.J. on the census. He explains that government representation is based on population, so there needs to be an accurate count of who’s being represented. Every ten years, the Census Bureau goes door-to-door, performing an elaborate head count. The process takes 950,000 people and costs nearly $7 billion.

In the Roosevelt Room, the argument turns to the inherent flaws of the census: it always undercounts people in the inner city, recent immigrants, and the homeless. In 1990, eight million people, mostly black, were excluded or missed completely. Sampling, on the other hand, would be more accurate and would cost four billion less. But it’s unconstitutional, the congressmen protest. Toby saw that coming.

Donna is stubbornly fixated on the idea of asking for her money back now there’s a budget surplus. Josh suggests he wants to take her share, put it with everyone else’s, and pay down the debt and endow Social Security. Donna shrugs her shoulders – she’d rather have cash to buy a DVD player.

JOSH: One of the problems is that the DVD player you buy might be made in Japan.
DONNA: I’ll buy an American one.
JOSH: We don’t trust you.
DONNA: Why not?
JOSH: We’re Democrats.

President Bartlet, concerned that Charlie has no extracurricular or personal life, asks Josh to take his aide out for a beer. Like a father, Bartlet offers to give Josh some spending money but realises he doesn’t carry cash anymore. Josh plans for him and Charlie to “speak as men do.” But his plot is thwarted when Mallory and Zoey ask to come along. Mallory tells Josh to bring Sam, assuring him it’s not a booty call. C.J. hops on the bandwagon as well.

JOSH: The President’s daughter, the chief of staff’s daughter, a Georgetown bar, and Sam. What could possibly go wrong?

In his meeting, Toby says the constitutional article is arcane regarding sampling measures, unable to be the basis of modern judgement. Toby produces a copy of the Constitution with a flourish and Mandy reads Article 1, Section 2. It mandates that representation and taxation are apportioned by population. Ahead of a Supreme Court ruling, this is the provision the opponents of sampling will say will render it unconstitutional. He persuades Mr. Willis to admit that he knows the exact wording of the article, that government shall count free persons and “three-fifths of other persons” – slaves. Toby says, “They meant you, Mr Willis, didn’t they?” Gladman and Skinner want to wind up the meeting before tension mounts too high to handle, but Mr. Willis informs them he’s changed his mind. He’ll vote to drop the census amendment until the court rules on whether sampling is constitutional.

TOBY: I was wondering, what changed your mind?
MR. WILLIS: You did. I thought you made a very strong argument.
TOBY: Thank you. (beat) I’m smiling because . . . well, around here the merits of a particular argument generally take a backseat to political tactics.

Toby can’t lie to the man’s face – he took advantage of Mr. Willis and his naïveté in politics. Sampling is partisan, and if they sink to using it for the census, what will stop them from using it for elections? But Mr. Willis is content with his decision, it is likely to be the only vote he makes in the House.

[Joey Lucas]

From The Official Companion (cont.):

Leo gathers the courage to tell Bartlet of his pending divorce, and his friend’s reaction is anticipated. Bartlet asks to speak to Jenny himself, to smooth things over. He wonders why Leo waited so long to break the news, and Leo admits that he feared the President would garner the blame for the split. From the sag in Bartlet’s posture, it’s clear that he does feel the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.

Meanwhile, at a Georgetown hangout, the gloves are off for the office night out. Mallory kids Sam about his “special friend.” Zoey interjects, “The hooker?” Sam nearly spits out his drink, interrogating Zoey and Mallory about their knowledge of Laurie. More importantly, do their father’s know? Each says they don’t. Yet. Laughing, Zoey goes up to the bar, leaving her panic button behind.

At the bar, four college guys surround Zoey and start to harass her, unaware of who she is. Charlie notices the scene they’re making and comes to Zoey’s aid but immediately the guys start in with the racial slurs. Sam jumps up when he notices what’s going on, and he and Josh move toward the bar in hopes of cooling some tempers. Josh calmly tells them they don’t know it yet, but they’re having a pretty bad night. One frat boy wants to know who’s gonna give it to them. As he speaks, the Secret Service charge in and cave in their world. The frat guys are thrown facedown against the bar. Zoey is whisked out of the door by two agents. Charlie stands by, watching the guys being frisked, stripped of all their pride.

FRAT GUY #1: I’m not done with you, Sammy.
CHARLIE: My name’s Charlie Young, jackass, and if that bulge in your pocket’s an eight ball of blow, you’re spending spring break in federal prison.

When he hears about her evening, the President has to give Zoey the lecture he’s obviously rehearsed in his head many times. Zoey tells him she’s entitled to a normal life. Bartlet brushes her demand off: he’s worried about getting shot, sure, but that’s nothing to his constant fear of what might happen to her. Her spontaneous charades scare the hell out of the Secret Service and her father. He outlines what happens in his nightmare: Zoey gets dragged out of a party where she in innocently hanging out with friends. She’s kidnapped and spirited out of the country, and the United States is held up for 460 prisoners in Israel that they won’t release because Israel doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. At that point in the nightmare, Bartlet says he’s no longer the commander in chief, he’s “a father out of his mind because his little girl’s in a shack in Uganda with a Luger to her head.” He wants her to have a life, but she has to be careful.

Making his amends, Bartlet goes to Leo’s office and apologizes to him for his self-centred attitude towards the divorce – he truly wants to help his old friend through this. On a lighter note, Josh, Sam, and Charlie are going to be severely reprimanded for their night out on the town. Josh is sure he could have taken the guy on the left. Donna has bought Josh a sandwich. She tells him she’ll keep his change and invest it for him. After all, he’s not to be trusted with it.

At their next poker game, Josh confesses to the President that Charlie didn’t even blink before putting himself between Zoey and danger. Toby shifts the mood, exclaiming that he met a good man in Mr. Willis. “He didn’t mind saying, ‘I don’t know.’” Bartlet says, “’I don’t know’ and ‘What do you think?’ are two phrases that could fit nicely into all of our vocabularies.” Toby watches on the television coverage as Mr. Willis of Ohio votes ”yea,” and he smiles.