Wake-Up Call: Intimacy and the Gag Rule
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Bartlet is woken by a phone call, revealing Abbey changed his wake-up time from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m., showing her care for his rest.
Abbey enters and admits to adjusting Bartlet's schedule, leading to playful banter about his thwarted plan to sleep in.
The couple shares a light-hearted moment as Bartlet notices Abbey's wet hair, briefly shifting the tone to domestic intimacy.
A steward delivers breakfast, briefly interrupting the conversation as the Bartlets settle in for their morning routine.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Uncertain and potentially self-interested (implied in the discussion).
Mentioned as the swing votes whose defection would determine the bill's fate; invoked to quantify the risk of a veto or political stand.
- • Protect constituency and political standing while weighing party loyalty.
- • Avoid taking positions that would cause electoral damage.
- • Legislative decisions are often governed by immediate political calculus rather than idealism.
- • Support for the administration depends on tangible tradeoffs.
Professionally neutral and attentive—focused on ritualized service, conscious not to intrude on the couple's privacy.
Enters quietly with the breakfast cart, attempts to arrange chairs and offers to lay out papers; performs domestic service with polite restraint and withdraws after Bartlet declines help.
- • Deliver breakfast and set up the morning routine smoothly.
- • Present the briefing materials in an orderly fashion when asked.
- • Maintain the decorum of the residence during a private moment.
- • The White House residence requires discreet, professional upkeep.
- • Protocol and small courtesies matter in preserving presidential routine.
Begins amused and flirtatious, then moves to measured puzzlement and guarded pragmatism—publicly composed but privately unsettled by the policy tradeoff.
In bed, fumbling to answer the phone, slipping on his glasses, trading affectionate barbs with Abbey, then shifting tone to read and report the Foreign Ops markup and the Bangart amendment; he explicitly weighs moral rhetoric against immediate humanitarian consequences.
- • Preserve a last hour of domestic normalcy with Abbey.
- • Assess the scope and political consequence of the gag-rule amendment before committing to actions.
- • Avoid a hasty veto threat that would delay humanitarian aid.
- • Political principle must be balanced against immediate human consequences.
- • Legislative maneuvers in the Senate can create moral dilemmas that require cautious executive responses.
- • Civility and measured thought are necessary even when confronted with moral indignation.
Not directly observable in the scene; functionally represented as adversarial and political.
Not present physically; invoked as the senator who unexpectedly attached the gag-rule amendment to the Foreign Ops bill, thereby provoking the scene's ethical and political debate.
- • Advance a conservative policy limiting abortion-related counseling funded by U.S. aid.
- • Create a political test for the administration on principle versus pragmatism.
- • Foreign assistance should not fund speech or services that contradict conservative moral views.
- • Legislative riders can be used to force executive choices and score political points.
Anticipatory and combative (as implied by Bartlet's description).
Referenced collectively as the small bloc of 'cranky conservative Senators' waiting to pounce; their presence provides the immediate political pressure behind the amendment's inclusion.
- • Attach and defend the gag-rule rider to leverage policy preferences.
- • Force the administration into a difficult choice that benefits their political aims.
- • Moral standards should guide foreign assistance.
- • Political leverage through amendments is a legitimate tactic.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The bedside phone rings and initiates the morning beat: a staff voice informs Bartlet that Abbey changed his wake-up time. The call interrupts the couple's intimacy and draws domestic schedule discipline into the policy conversation.
The breakfast cart is wheeled in by the steward, steaming with plates and prompting small staging decisions (chairs, seating). It anchors the domestic normalcy that the scene uses to contrast with the later political rupture.
Morning briefing papers are offered by the steward and declined to be laid out by Bartlet; they nevertheless function as the tangible repository of information—the Foreign Ops markup the President references likely arrives in that stack and catalyzes the gag-rule revelation.
Bartlet reaches for and slips on his glasses mid-conversation—an intimate, grounding gesture that marks the shift from flirtation to focused attention on the briefing and the gag-rule problem.
Mentioned as part of Bartlet's anecdote about touring Oak Ridge, the insulin molecule model supplies comic and human texture to the morning, underscoring his fatigue and the thin domestic veneer before policy intrudes.
The gag-rule amendment is the central policy object: Bartlet reports that Clancy Bangart attached it in markup. It is the narrative trigger that forces the couple into a moral-versus-pragmatic argument, converting private space into a policy planning moment.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Sub-Saharan Africa is invoked as the traditional beneficiary whose funds were shifted; its invocation pulls the gag-rule debate into clear humanitarian terms—disease, starvation, and clinics at risk.
The Republic of Equatorial Khundu is invoked tangentially as a place where U.S. troops are committed under the President's prior decisions, used by Abbey to argue the moral consistency of defending speech internationally while restricting aid.
Nashville is referenced to explain Bartlet's late return and fatigue; the trip provides causal texture for his tired, joking state at breakfast and grounds the timeline of the morning.
Oak Ridge is cited in Bartlet's anecdote about touring a weapons research facility and seeing an insulin molecule model; it lends technical authority and humor to the morning's banter, then fades as policy discussion takes over.
Provence is referenced as the odd locus of ‘crippling hunger’ that allegedly prompts a budget shift; the mention amplifies the absurdity and moral stakes of aid allocation decisions discussed over breakfast.
Western Europe is mentioned as the destination of shifted funds; its reference underscores the oddity of reallocating scarce resources and frames the tradeoffs in geographical and political terms.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
The U.S. Senate functions as the originating arena for the political problem—the Senate markup produced the gag-rule rider attached by Bangart. Its legislative procedures and amendment powers create the bind forcing executive choices between principle and immediate aid delivery.
Senior Staff are invoked indirectly via references to memos, 'Operation Human Snooze Button' and preparatory materials; their planning and memos shape the President's briefing and provide the procedural apparatus for responding to the gag-rule dilemma.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Bartlet's revelation of the 'global gag rule' amendment directly leads to Abbey assigning Amy the task of influencing the President to oppose it."
"Bartlet's revelation of the 'global gag rule' amendment directly leads to Abbey assigning Amy the task of influencing the President to oppose it."
"Abbey's advocacy for a veto threat on the gag rule parallels Amy's later push for a Statement of Administrative Policy (SAP), both emphasizing moral principle over pragmatism."
"Abbey's advocacy for a veto threat on the gag rule parallels Amy's later push for a Statement of Administrative Policy (SAP), both emphasizing moral principle over pragmatism."
"Abbey's advocacy for a veto threat on the gag rule parallels Amy's later push for a Statement of Administrative Policy (SAP), both emphasizing moral principle over pragmatism."
Key Dialogue
"ABBEY: "What would happen if you said, 'Send me this bill with the gag rule and I'll veto?'""
"BARTLET: "People are starving to death, and they're dying of disease to death, and they can't cook the Bill of Rights.""
"ABBEY: "So we're for freedom of speech everywhere, but poor countries where they can have our help but only if they live up to Clancy Bangart's moral standards? What the hell kind of free world are you running?""