Bartlet Stakes the Energy Claim — 'Reach for the Stars'
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
President Bartlet delivers a campaign speech focusing on energy alternatives and criticizes Republican energy policies.
Bartlet concludes his speech with a call for American heroes and reaching for the stars.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Frustrated and pressed — working to make contact with voters but increasingly aware of logistical consequences.
Mentioned offstage as being 'in the soybean fields' with Toby and Cathy; implicitly engaged with voters while inadvertently creating a timing problem for the campaign.
- • Connect with local voters and defend campaign policy on the ground.
- • Gather useful feedback or anecdotes to inform messaging.
- • Rejoin the team before the motorcade/momentum is lost.
- • Retail politics matter for persuasion in rural areas.
- • Direct engagement can outweigh planned optics.
- • Staff will improvise to fix logistical missteps.
Controlled urgency — professional concern for timing and optics, masking impatience about staff slippage.
Interrupts the public moment by walking across the stage to quietly but urgently ask Donna where Josh and Toby are, prioritizing logistical reality over the rhetorical high point.
- • Locate missing aides to protect the President's schedule.
- • Prevent a logistical failure from becoming a political liability.
- • Coordinate a quick remedy without disrupting the event.
- • Operational details can make or break campaign momentum.
- • Staff must be accountable and present when needed.
- • Quick, quiet problem-solving preserves public image.
Irritated and inwardly tense — focused on messaging integrity even when it conflicts with scheduling demands.
Also mentioned offstage in the soybean fields with Josh and Cathy, inferred as debating policy and contributing to the delay that C.J. must remedy.
- • Ensure the campaign's public messaging is accurate and defensible.
- • Assess rural voter sentiment to refine communications.
- • Return to the campaign to reinsert careful messaging into events.
- • Honest policy communication outweighs superficial spin.
- • Certain states/communities require careful listening, not rushed sound bites.
Righteously indignant with controlled theatricality — confident, persuasive, lightly self-aware about limits (Abbey reference).
Delivers an extended, homespun anecdote and then pivots to an impassioned argument for renewable energy, naming Texaco and Shell and recasting Republicans as obstructionists while the crowd cheers.
- • Reframe the campaign narrative around renewable energy and moral courage.
- • Deflate opposition by casting Republicans as beholden to big oil.
- • Energize and unify the crowd behind a forward-looking policy stance.
- • Americans are perceptive and will notice political hypocrisy.
- • Energy independence and renewables are morally and politically urgent.
- • Political theater can translate into policy momentum.
Calm competence; quietly urgent — confident she can solve the problem and keep the timeline moving.
Standing off to the side, responds calmly to C.J.'s question and volunteers to retrieve Josh and Toby from the soybean fields, signaling competence and willingness to fix the breakdown.
- • Recover missing aides quickly to rejoin the motorcade.
- • Minimize disruption to the President's schedule and the campaign's optics.
- • Maintain her role as logistical anchor under pressure.
- • Practical action resolves most logistical crises.
- • The campaign's momentum depends on reliable staff execution.
- • Direct intervention is faster than bureaucratic solutions.
Energized and approving — buoyed by humor and aspirational rhetoric.
Provides vocal energy — chanting 'Four more years', laughing at the anecdote, and applauding the President's call for courage, effectively validating Bartlet's rhetorical turn.
- • Express visible support for the President and his message.
- • Create an atmosphere that reinforces campaign momentum and legitimacy.
- • Bartlet represents leadership worth supporting.
- • Public enthusiasm can translate into political advantage.
Engaged and matter-of-fact — focused on explaining small-farm realities to campaign staff.
Referenced as 'Cathy' in Donna's line — characterized as the daughter in the soybean fields with Josh and Toby, a local interlocutor grounding the aides' offstage engagement.
- • Convey local concerns about subsidies and farming realities.
- • Assist or direct the aides so they understand local priorities.
- • Local experience and practical fixes matter more than slogans.
- • Politicians should listen and respond to small-farm needs.
Amused and economical — represents opportunism rather than malice in the anecdote.
Appears only within Bartlet's anecdote as the pragmatic farmer who 'fills the hole with water' at night — a rhetorical device that makes the President's accusation vivid and memorable.
- • Serve as a memorable symbol of cynical opportunism in the President's story.
- • Provide comedic relief while sharpening the policy critique.
- • People often manufacture problems to profit from solving them.
- • Simple stories can reveal political hypocrisy.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The soybean fields function as the offstage complication: where Josh and Toby are delayed engaging a local (Cathy). The location concretely produces the logistical delay that undercuts the President's onstage momentum and forces staff improvisation.
Unionville is the next scheduled stop referenced by staff as the ticking clock: their looming destination frames the urgency of retrieving the missing aides and underscores the operational stakes behind the speech.
The muddy hole exists as a rhetorical image within Bartlet's anecdote, providing a vivid tactile metaphor for political actors who create problems they then profit from solving.
The campaign rally stage is the theatrical focal point where Bartlet tells his anecdote and pivots to policy; it also becomes the physical site of an urgent staff exchange when C.J. crosses the stage to query Donna, collapsing public performance and backstage logistics into one frame.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
Texaco is named by President Bartlet as an exemplar of 'big oil' during his critique, used rhetorically to connect everyday frustrations at the pump to political culpability and to mobilize voters around renewable alternatives.
Shell is likewise invoked by the President as shorthand for big-oil interests; its mention helps convert a local anecdote into a national policy charge against fossil-fuel aligned politics.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Bartlet's call for American heroes and reaching for the stars in his speech is echoed in his later reflective speech about memorable experiences."
Key Dialogue
"BARTLET: We need to find energy alternatives. We're getting our cue. We're getting it right now."
"BARTLET: The Republicans are busy. They're trying to convince us that they care about new energy and that they're not in the vest pockets of big oil, and that's a tough sell. I don't envy them, 'cause their only hope is that we don't notice that they're the ones who are filling the hole with water every night, and I think Americans are smarter then that. I think we noticed."
"C.J.: Where are Josh and Toby? DONNA: They're in the soybean fields, talking to Cathy."