Montana (state)
Detailed Involvements
Events with rich location context
Montana exists here as a referenced political geography and moral stake—the threatened 'length and breadth' of the state is invoked to make the rider's consequences tangible and emotionally resonant.
Imagined as wide, threatened open country—used rhetorically to heighten stakes.
Illustrative battleground that translates abstract legislative language into real environmental and electoral stakes.
Embodies what is at risk—the physical landscape and political votes that give the abstract fight human consequence.
Montana is evoked as the electoral and ecological stake — staffers cite its three electoral votes and the political calculus of carrying the state as a concrete reason to consider swallowing the rider.
Summoned through rhetoric: windswept, high-country vulnerability contrasted with legislative maps and vote counts.
Electoral prize and policy stake influencing the administration's cost-benefit analysis.
Represents the tangible human and political consequences of abstract legislative choices.
Events at This Location
Everything that happens here
In the communications office the team learns the Banking Bill's passage is threatened when Josh bursts in: Representatives Broderick and Eaton have secretly attached a punitive land‑use rider. Toby begins …
Bartlet, Leo and the senior staff rush into the Oval after learning Representatives Eaton and Broderick have slipped a punitive land‑use rider onto a landmark banking reform conference report to …