Josh Pins Leo on the VP Board
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Josh meticulously evaluates potential Vice Presidential candidates, crossing off names due to health concerns and political viability.
Josh subtly hints at considering Leo McGarry as a potential Vice Presidential candidate, adding his picture to the board.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Controlled, focused and mildly anxious — outwardly clinical about vetting while privately guided by loyalty and an urge to structure uncertainty.
Josh conducts purposeful vetting: scanning folders, pulling a Senate seating chart and crossing off McKenna for health reasons, debating Lyndell's confirmation chances, walking to Donna's desk to retrieve a folder, listening to Charlie's confession, and ripping/pinning a Bartlet-Leo photograph to his board to elevate Leo as a serious option.
- • Identify a vice-presidential candidate who can be confirmed by the Senate.
- • Signal and prioritize Leo as a vetted, serious option by altering the visual board.
- • Keep the vetting process moving despite personal interruptions.
- • Diffuse Charlie's personal knot with practical, humane advice to preserve staff cohesion.
- • Confirmation math (Senate seating) is decisive in selecting a VP.
- • Symbolic acts (pinning a photo) have force in shaping team priorities.
- • Small personal reconciliations among staff help preserve the President's wider mission.
- • Pragmatic choices trump idealism when the presidency is at stake.
Neutral and professional; functions as a factual catalyst rather than an emotional actor.
A TV reporter's muted broadcast is audible background: 'Hoynes: Farewell to Politics,' establishing the catalyzing news that forces the vetting exercise and coloring the room's sense of urgency.
- • Report breaking political news to the public.
- • Set the context for the staff's urgent vetting conversation.
- • The public deserves timely coverage of political resignations.
- • Media framing can accelerate internal governmental action.
Not present; his candidacy is an operational variable rather than an emotional presence.
Ryan Lyndell is discussed as a favored candidate by Josh and the President but opposed by the Speaker, which illustrates a political obstacle and narrows strategic options during the vetting.
- • Be placed on and survive the ticket vetting list.
- • Achieve sufficient support to clear Speaker opposition.
- • Policy competence and personal qualities matter to insiders.
- • External opponents (Speaker) can block otherwise viable picks.
Wounded and embarrassed on the surface; defensive and resigned internally — trying to protect his pride even while hungering for reconciliation.
Charlie interrupts the vetting work to ask about five‑year-old files, produces a wallet and reads a folded note describing where he buried a cheap champagne bottle for Zoey, resists Josh's encouragement to retrieve it, accepts the vetting folder Josh hands him, and exits—leaving the personal and professional beats interlaced.
- • Obtain the requested vetting files for the President.
- • Avoid reopening a personal wound tied to Zoey by refusing to retrieve the champagne.
- • Preserve professional composure while privately processing rejection.
- • Signal to Josh (and himself) that he can step away from the personal gesture.
- • Zoey's rejection is genuine and should be respected.
- • Some gestures (like buried champagne) are worth doing but may not change outcomes.
- • Maintaining professional duty can coexist with personal disappointment.
- • Small, concrete acts of remembrance matter even when they will go unrewarded.
Not directly emotional in-scene; his presence via photograph conveys steady leadership and indirect influence.
President Bartlet does not appear in person but is represented visually when Josh rips a newspaper photograph showing Bartlet waving with Leo walking behind him; the image serves as a stand-in for presidential preference and the weight of executive choice.
- • (Representational) Influence the staff's vetting priorities through identification and alliance.
- • (Representational) Ensure the presidency is paired with a politically viable running mate.
- • Personal trust and long-standing alliances matter in ticket selection.
- • The President's preferences will shape staff decisions, even nonverbally.
Attentive and steady, operating in the background to enable colleagues' work rather than drawing attention to herself.
Donna is present implicitly as the owner of the desk Josh visits to fetch a vetting folder; she provides the physical infrastructure (the desk/folders) that allows Josh to maintain momentum in the vetting work, though she has no spoken lines in this segment.
- • Keep Josh's workspace and filing materials available and orderly.
- • Support the vetting process with immediate access to documents.
- • Maintain normal West Wing flow during an awkward personal exchange.
- • The staff's administrative competence underpins political work.
- • Quiet, practical support is often more effective than showy gestures.
- • Josh relies on her desk and files to move fast; she must deliver.
Not present to display emotion; functionally sidelined.
McKenna is not present but is actively crossed off the Senate seating chart by Josh for health reasons; this action removes him from contention and signals vetting criteria in practice.
- • (Implied) Secure health to be eligible for confirmation — a goal unmet.
- • (Narrative) Serve as an example of vetting constraints.
- • Health is a disqualifying factor for high office confirmation.
- • Seating-chart math will determine practical viability.
Not present; expressed as a political barrier with leverage over confirmation outcomes.
The Speaker is invoked as an opposing force to Ryan Lyndell's confirmation; his attitude is treated as a structural constraint shaping the vetting conversation.
- • Use institutional leverage to influence confirmation outcomes.
- • Protect partisan advantage by obstructing favorable opposition picks.
- • Confirmation is a political battleground controlled by institutional leaders.
- • The Speaker's opposition can make a nominee unworkable.
Not present; functions as narrative reason for Zoey's impending absence.
Tartuffe is mentioned by Charlie as the person Zoey will travel with to France, providing motive for Charlie's urgency and resignation about the champagne gesture's timing.
- • (Implied) Travel companion facilitating Zoey's removal from the local scene.
- • (Narrative) Provide impetus for Charlie's sense of finality.
- • Zoey will leave for France and be out of reach.
- • Personal reconciliations are time-sensitive and can be preempted by travel.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The muted TV plays a news report about Hoynes' departure, providing the public-information context that explains and accelerates the vetting activity; although muted, the content informs the room's urgency.
Josh pulls a Senate seating chart, studies confirmation math, and crosses off McKenna for health reasons. The chart functions as the immediate analytic tool converting abstract vetting criteria into concrete eliminations.
Charlie withdraws his wallet, discovers and reads a folded note; the wallet is the physical trigger that surfaces a private ritual and forces the personal beat into the work environment.
Josh strides to Donna's desk in the bullpen to fetch a vetting folder and then hands that folder to Charlie before he leaves; the folder is the administrative object that completes the professional task Charlie inquired about.
Josh tears a photograph of President Bartlet and Leo from a newspaper; the image is physically removed from the paper and repurposed as a deliberate symbol on the vetting board to change priorities and telegraph the President's network of trust.
The $14 bottle of champagne is referenced as the sentimental object Charlie and Zoey buried at the Arboretum; it functions as the emotional kernel of Charlie's anecdote and a possible reconciliation tool Josh urges him to retrieve.
The folded note reading '5/7, 10 PM, Paeonia Japonica/Bamboo' is produced from Charlie's wallet and spoken aloud; it supplies precise coordinates that animate the champagne subplot and anchors the sentimental beat to a real location.
The vetting board receives the added picture of Bartlet and Leo; as a visual organizer it now signals Leo's promotion from a background figure to an endorsed contender and calibrates staff attention.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Donna's desk is the immediate source of the vetting folder Josh retrieves; it functions as the logistical backbone supporting the vetting process and as the physical place where administrative continuity is maintained.
Josh's bullpen area serves as the transitional workspace where Josh leaves his private office to retrieve a vetting folder from Donna's desk and continues the vetting conversation while Charlie follows; it is the operational hub linking private office decisions with staff action.
The Paeonia Japonica spot in the National Arboretum is evoked by Charlie's note as the precise burying location for the champagne; it functions here as an off-screen emotional landmark anchoring Charlie's private ritual and the possibility of reconciliation.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Charlie's personal mission to retrieve the champagne bottle for Zoey is revisited when he and Josh go to the Arboretum at night."
"Charlie's personal mission to retrieve the champagne bottle for Zoey is revisited when he and Josh go to the Arboretum at night."
Key Dialogue
"CHARLIE: "Josh? The President wants to know if we still have the vetting files from five years ago?""
"JOSH: "For Vice President you mean?""
"JOSH: "You do.""