From Coffee to 'Total Disaster'
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Admiral Fitzwallace and the National Security team discuss the coffee, setting a casual tone before the President's arrival.
President Bartlet and Leo enter, shifting the focus to the military response scenarios.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Restrained alarm; recognizing the operational implications of an order for overwhelming force and the gravity of civilian cost.
The General (senior military voice) affirms operational readiness—'We're there'—and responds when Bartlet's impulse to carpet-bomb Damascus is suggested, signaling both shock and the military's reckoning with political appetite for escalation.
- • Clarify the feasibility and consequences of military options.
- • Protect service members and maintain disciplined, lawful use of force.
- • Military must be able to execute orders but must also counsel restraint where civilian leadership's intentions risk excessive escalation.
- • Clear, realistic briefing prevents miscalculation.
Grieving and enraged; grief translates into punitive fury that overrides procedural restraint.
President Jed Bartlet enters the Situation Room, listens, interrogates the logic of proportionality, slams his fist on the table, rises and storms out after ordering a dramatically larger response within an hour.
- • Demand a military response that communicates utter deterrence and moral outrage.
- • Force his advisors to produce an option he perceives as meaningfully punitive within a strict timeframe.
- • Proportional responses can be read as predictable and therefore impotent.
- • Some actions require a demonstrative, disproportional reply to deter future attacks and honor victims.
Worried and duty-focused; anxious about political/media fallout while determined to keep the President focused and the process intact.
Leo McGarry attempts to steady the exchange, prompts attention to Pericles One, and parries Bartlet's rhetorical escalation with reminders of precedent and procedure, then reluctantly accepts Bartlet's directive to produce a different option in an hour.
- • Protect the President from rash decisions that could create strategic or political disaster.
- • Translate the President's anger into achievable, controlled options for the team.
- • Process and checks exist to prevent catastrophic mistakes.
- • The President must be heard, but his anger should be channeled into executable policy.
Focused and neutral; slightly tense as the room's tone shifts toward confrontation.
Officer First supports the briefing with concise confirmations and procedural readiness cues, enabling the Admiral's presentation and maintaining the Situation Room's technical rhythm as the argument intensifies.
- • Provide accurate, immediate information to senior leaders.
- • Keep procedural channels open so options can be executed if ordered.
- • Timely, clear reporting is essential to decision-making.
- • Operational readiness depends on disciplined information flow rather than rhetoric.
Calm, procedural composure fraying into concern as the President rejects established military logic.
Admiral Fitzwallace opens with light banter about the coffee, presents the three strike scenarios including Pericles One, answers Bartlet's probing questions with measured professional detail, and is visibly challenged when Bartlet demands a disproportional strike.
- • Convey workable, legally and operationally responsible response options.
- • Preserve military credibility while minimizing risk to U.S. personnel and assets.
- • The military's obligation is to provide feasible, proportional options that limit escalation.
- • Escalatory or disproportional orders carry unacceptable operational and political costs.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The abandoned railroad bridge is another enumerated Pericles One target; its inclusion as a derelict, low-civilian-risk target sharpens Bartlet's complaint that predictable, limited strikes won't satisfy the moral demand for retribution.
Ammo dumps are named components of Pericles One and serve narratively as concrete, low-risk targets that highlight proportionality's predictability; Bartlet argues those targets are abandoned and therefore insufficiently punitive, provoking his call for greater action.
Pericles One is presented as the primary, prepared retaliatory package: slides, mapped targets and an operational framing. It functions as the foil for Bartlet's critique — the embodiment of proportional doctrine he finds inadequate and wants superseded by a more devastating plan.
The West Wing double doors stage the arrival and exit that frame the scene: they open to admit Bartlet and Leo and close behind Bartlet as he leaves in anger, marking the movement from ordinary briefing to charged presidential directive.
The Roosevelt Room oval conference table is the central focus: documents and maps are arrayed on it, Fitzwallace gestures from it, and Bartlet bangs his fist on it to punctuate his repudiation of proportionality — turning furniture into a stage for presidential command and emotional release.
Fitzwallace's coffee cup is the tactile prop that opens the beat — a small, domestic detail that frames an initially collegial mood and underscores how quickly normalcy collapses when the President enters. The coffee remark humanizes the room before grief converts it into policy fury.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Situation Room is the operational theater where doctrine, intelligence and emotion collide: screens, maps and secure lines surround the table while staff deliver options. Its confined, procedural setting makes Bartlet's emotional rupture more jarring and forces institutional processes to absorb private rage.
Damascus functions offstage as the implied escalatory target invoked when the General asks if the President means carpet-bombing; the city's name compresses strategic, humanitarian, and diplomatic consequences into one volatile signifier.
Pericles One — Two Ammo Dumps is the specific mapped location-set forming the backbone of the presented proportional option; its schematic nature allows staff to discuss casualty estimates and feasibility clinically, which Bartlet rejects as morally insufficient.
The Syrian Intelligence Agency appears on the Pericles One target list as a high-rated institutional target; its inclusion frames the action as strategically meaningful but also politically hazardous, prompting Bartlet to question whether limited strikes hit the real moral target.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"The bombing that destroys Syrian Intelligence (in beat_b9919a0f87204720) is a direct result of the President's demand for a disproportional response (in beat_e1fe84c660037c14), showing the consequences of his initial impulse."
"The bombing that destroys Syrian Intelligence (in beat_b9919a0f87204720) is a direct result of the President's demand for a disproportional response (in beat_e1fe84c660037c14), showing the consequences of his initial impulse."
"Bartlet's demand for a disproportional response (in beat_0776413780209e6e) escalates to Fitzwallace presenting the catastrophic Hassan airport strike option (in beat_529b901bffc3ca71), showing the progression of military considerations."
Key Dialogue
"FITZWALLACE: "This is different coffee than we usually have.""
"BARTLET: "What's the virtue of a proportional response?" FITZWALLACE: "It isn't virtuous Mr. President. It's all there is sir.""
"BARTLET: "A disproportional response. Let the word ring forth from this time and this place... we come back" [bangs fist on table] "with total disaster! ... put together a U.S. response scenario that doesn't make me think we are just docking somebody's damn allowance!""