Banter, Then Bare Truth
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Bartlet enters Will's office and jokes about Toby's behavior, setting a light tone.
Will initially claims everything is fine, then admits it's not, revealing underlying tension.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Not physically present; his presence is invoked lightly, supplying comic relief and a shorthand for inside-staff dynamics.
Referenced in the opening joke (Bartlet and Will banter about 'Toby' and pants) but absent from the room; his name functions as a conversational prop and rhetorical foil in Will and Bartlet's exchange.
- • (Implied) Represent the communications shop and the pressures around phrasing the inaugural address
- • Serve as a rhetorical benchmark for Will's and Bartlet's interplay
- • The choice of language matters (implied through invocation)
- • Staff dynamics and personalities shape public messaging
Playful at first but quickly sharpening into focused seriousness and moral curiosity; uses humor to disarm and then presses for an honest answer.
Enters Will's office, knocks on the doorframe, opens with teasing banter, then picks up Will's speech from the desk, reads key language aloud and delivers a hard moral question before exiting; he shifts tone from playful to probing and commands the moral center of the exchange.
- • Strip away deflection and compel an honest appraisal of the speech's moral premise
- • Gauge Will's conviction and the political risk of the proposed doctrine
- • Reframe the speech as an ethical test rather than mere policy rhetoric
- • Expose whether the speech represents personal conviction or reckless grandstanding
- • Rhetoric should be morally defensible, not merely rhetorically clever
- • The President must confront the ethical implications of foreign-policy language
- • Moral clarity matters politically and humanly; unequal valuation of lives is unacceptable to test
- • Provocation can be used as a tool to reveal truth
Absent; his name functions as shorthand for lineage and the social weight behind Will's position.
Invoked by Bartlet as a way to needle Will — the reference to Tom Bailey compresses family pedigree and military gravitas into a single quip, altering the emotional tone and testing Will's motives.
- • (Narrative/inferred) Lend implied legitimacy or expectation to Will through lineage
- • Serve as a measuring rod for Will's temperament and audacity
- • Family pedigree influences public service behavior (implied)
- • Military legacy carries cultural weight in policy decisions (implied)
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Will's Khundunese Doctrine Speech Draft sits on Will's desk and is physically picked up by President Bartlet, who reads its language aloud. The paper functions as catalyst and evidence: it concretizes an abstract doctrine into a provocation that Bartlet interrogates, transforming private drafting into public moral question.
Will's desk anchors the scene physically and narratively: it holds the draft that Bartlet removes, frames Will's seated posture and defensive joking, and marks the boundary between private work and presidential interrogation when Bartlet reaches across it.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Republic of Equatorial Khundu functions as the moral and policy foil of the exchange: its civilians are the unnamed victims whose value is being weighed rhetorically. Although not physically present, Khundu's crisis supplies the ethical pressure that converts a speech draft into a test of conscience.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
The Khundunese are invoked rhetorically as the human subjects whose worth is compared to Americans; their plight is the moral hinge of the event, turning a policy draft into an ethical indictment of unequal valuation.
The Americans are the implicit reference point Bartlet uses to measure moral obligation; their formal status as citizens anchors the question of why their lives should count more than others, shaping the political calculus behind the inaugural language.
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
"WILL: "Keep your pants on, Toby, I'm almost there.""
"WILL: "No, it's not.""
"BARTLET: "Why is a Khundunese life worth less to me than an American life?" WILL: "I don't know, sir, but it is.""