The Big Cheese and the Green Card
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Staffers discuss Leo's monthly 'big block of cheese' tradition, revealing its irregular schedule and their mixed feelings about it.
Leo enters and delivers his Jacksonian cheese speech, establishing authority while staffers mock the tradition.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Professional detachment with an awareness that the information is consequential; mildly apologetic but committed to protocol.
Jonathan Lacey enters the office as a concise, businesslike NSC officer, opens a folder, produces a green evacuation card attached with a paper clip and cardholder, explains its function tersely, answers Josh's questions with institutional language and offers a phone number before withdrawing politely.
- • Deliver the evacuation card and ensure Josh understands how to use it
- • Convey necessary contingency instructions efficiently
- • Avoid engaging in policy debate or moral justification
- • Maintain NSC authority and procedural clarity
- • Believes continuity-of-government protocols must be distributed to designated personnel
- • Believes operational secrecy and need-to-know are essential to security
- • Believes that providing the card satisfies the NSC's duty to warn/protect designated individuals
- • Believes the NSC should not be drawn into explaining prioritization decisions
Clinically composed in public but privately conflicted; his averted gaze betrays discomfort and an unwillingness to confront the emotional fallout of policy decisions.
Leo shepherds Josh into his office, introduces Jonathan Lacey, stands behind Josh as the exchange occurs, smacks Josh playfully earlier, and when Josh asks if his staff are included Leo looks away—avoiding an answer and signaling institutional constraints.
- • Maintain institutional protocol and chain-of-command privacy
- • Shield sensitive security procedures from broader staff knowledge
- • Prevent panic or gossip among junior staff by containing information
- • Avoid personal confrontation with Josh about the exclusion implied by the card
- • Believes national security protocols justify secrecy and selective protection
- • Believes senior staff must sometimes accept painful institutional realities
- • Believes that revealing allocation decisions will cause disorder among staff
- • Believes his role includes enforcing difficult boundaries even when personally uncomfortable
Surface: flustered and embarrassed; underneath: stunned, betrayed, panicked for his staff and ashamed at the personal privilege implied by the card.
Josh enters with C.J., is smacked playfully by Leo, follows Leo into his office, receives the green evacuation card from Lacey, reads it in stunned disbelief, asks if his staff are included, tucks the card away beside his video club membership and leaves, visibly shaken.
- • Understand what the card means and who it protects
- • Ascertain whether his staff would be evacuated with him
- • Preserve a sense of normalcy and avoid public alarm
- • Avoid exposing his vulnerability while he processes the moral implications
- • He believes loyalty to his team is a defining duty and they deserve equal protection
- • He believes institutions should protect their people, not just officials
- • He believes secrecy and protocol may override personal loyalties
- • He believes his role requires he be both politically pragmatic and personally honest
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The routing folder serves as the container for the green card; Lacey opens it to reveal the card and its attachments, making the procedural nature of the handoff visible and formalizing the transfer.
Air Force One is referenced verbally as the evacuation destination printed on the card; it acts as the promised safe transit that gives the card its literal and symbolic value.
A thin green evacuation card in a translucent cardholder is produced from Lacey's folder and handed to Josh; it functions as the narrative catalyst, converting ritual banter into an existential security decision about who is entitled to evacuation.
A small, personal video-club membership card is invoked by Josh as the mundane anchor next to which he plans to stash the evacuation card—an act that dramatizes how ordinary life collides with extraordinary privilege.
Josh's worn leather wallet is the intended private repository for the green card; it symbolizes the personal concealment of an institutional protection and the tension between private needs and public obligations.
A small metal paper clip fastens the cardholder to the folder, a mundane office detail that underscores the bureaucratic packaging of a life-preserving privilege during the transfer.
Leo closes this office door to create a private containment for the NSC handoff; the door functions as a physical and symbolic divider between public ritual and private, morally fraught information.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Roosevelt Room is the public forum where Leo performs the Jackson anecdote, marshals senior staff, and establishes the convivial ritual that briefly masks deeper institutional tensions before Josh is pulled out for a private exchange.
The West Wing hallway functions as the transitional geography between public ritual and private disclosure—Josh and Leo walk through it, and as Josh emerges later he is briefly exposed to passing staff, amplifying his isolation and the secrecy he now carries.
Leo's office is the intimate pressure chamber where the NSC officer hands Josh the green card; its closed door, desk, and small square footage concentrate authority and force an uncomfortable moral calculus.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Josh’s receipt of the N.S.C. card leads directly to his confession of it to C.J."
"Josh’s receipt of the N.S.C. card leads directly to his confession of it to C.J."
"Josh’s initial compartmentalization mirrors his unresolved tension."
"Josh’s initial compartmentalization mirrors his unresolved tension."
"The N.S.C. card’s symbolic exclusion parallels Josh’s trauma of surviving the fire while leaving Joanie behind."
"The N.S.C. card’s symbolic exclusion parallels Josh’s trauma of surviving the fire while leaving Joanie behind."
Key Dialogue
"LEO: Andrew Jackson, in the main foyer of his White House had a big block of cheese."
"LACEY: I'd like you to keep this card on your person at all times. If you keep it in your wallet and you lose your wallet, your first call isn't to American Express. It's to us."
"JOSH: And my staff goes with me or do they have separate...?"