Scripture, Leaks, and a Presidential Toast
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Bartlet quotes Isaiah while handing Leo a glass of water, invoking moral duty and leadership responsibility.
Leo expresses discomfort with Bartlet's biblical references, signaling his concerns about the President's rhetoric.
Bartlet shifts tone with a casual toast, diffusing tension while maintaining the gravity of their discussion.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Playful exterior with resolute conviction—uses levity to absorb anxiety while signaling willingness to accept political cost.
Bartlet pours a drink, fills a second glass with water, quotes Isaiah aloud to morally frame intervention, offers Leo the water, deflects Leo's practical warnings with a bawdy toast, and verbally accepts shared political risk while agreeing a Sunday-noon timetable.
- • Recast the Khundu decision as a moral imperative rather than a political calculation.
- • Reassure and steady his chief (Leo) while committing the administration to a public timetable.
- • Diffuse immediate fear through humor to retain control of the room.
- • Moral language (scripture) can legitimate costly action and bind the team.
- • Leadership requires taking responsibility for risk rather than delegating it away.
- • Political backlash is an acceptable price for doing what is morally right.
Concerned and guarded—practical anxiety about optics and institutional maneuvers under a composed veneer of duty.
Leo receives the offered glass, chastises the President jokingly about biblical allusions, and immediately shifts to concrete warnings about leaks: Pentagon-sourced casualty figures and an anticipated discovery of Gulfstream wreckage; he presses for and confirms the Sunday-noon timeline.
- • Expose and blunt sources of potential political damage before they become public.
- • Lock in a concrete operational timetable to control the narrative and logistics.
- • Keep the President grounded in practical realities while preserving his authority.
- • The Pentagon (or elements within it) will leak casualty narratives to shape public opinion.
- • Material evidence (wreckage fragments) will be used to manufacture a narrative of American loss.
- • Unless preemptively managed, these leaks will derail the administration's moral argument and policy.
Not directly emotional—serves as a moral voice deployed by Bartlet to justify intervention.
Isaiah is invoked by Bartlet as a rhetorical and moral authority; the prophet has no physical presence but functions as the ethical anchor for Bartlet's argument to intervene in Khundu.
- • Provide scripture-based moral justification for intervention.
- • Elevate the decision from political calculation to ethical duty.
- • Scripture articulates a universal obligation to aid the oppressed.
- • Invoking biblical authority strengthens moral legitimacy for political action.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Referenced by Leo as the specific physical fragment a search-and-rescue team will find—a piece of Shareef's Gulfstream—that can be paired with Pentagon casualty figures and used by media to imply American deaths; here it functions as the likely tangible catalyst for a damaging leak narrative.
Invoked as the 'lost helicopter prop' that search-and-rescue teams will dive for—Leo frames the helicopter wreckage as part of the narrative package the Pentagon could use to amplify American losses, making the helicopter itself and its fragments narrative instruments rather than neutral wreckage.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Khundu is the distant theatre of humanitarian crisis whose civilian catastrophe provides the moral stakes for Bartlet's scripture-anchored argument; in this exchange it exists as the abstract but urgent subject whose casualties and evidence will shape public perception.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
The Pentagon is invoked as the proximate institutional source of damaging casualty figures and quoted material; Leo warns that Pentagon-sourced pieces and the use of wreckage will be the mechanism by which the defense establishment shapes a public narrative that could undercut the White House's moral framing.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Leo's warning about political threats and NSC directives directly leads to his later discussion with Bartlet about Pentagon leaks and potential casualties, showing the escalating stakes of their decisions."
"Leo's warning about political threats and NSC directives directly leads to his later discussion with Bartlet about Pentagon leaks and potential casualties, showing the escalating stakes of their decisions."
Key Dialogue
"BARTLET: Set free the oppressed, break every yoke, clothe the naked and your light shall break forth like the dawn, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard."
"LEO: Ah, that tastes like... nothing at all. It has no taste or properties of any kind. You can expect to see pieces quoting Pentagon sources on how many lives we'd lose in Khundu. And a search and rescue group, diving for a lost helicopter prop, is going to find a piece of a Gulfstream."
"BARTLET: I think you're wrong. But if you're right, then okay. We should all have a little skin in this."