When the President's Daughter Went Missing

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President Bartlet (Martin Sheen): Would you consider, instead of living in France with your boyfriend for three months, staying here, living in your room and being a candy striper or surfing?

Zoey (Elisabeth Moss): A candy striper?

President Bartlet: Or surfing. You could spend the summer working in a pet shop. We could play Yahtzee and watch movies at night.

Zoey: Dad, what fantasy is it that's going through your head right now?

President Bartlet: What daughters would do their whole lives if I had my way.

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For most families, college commencement is a great occasion — a time of pride in the accomplishment of one of their own.

It is sure to be the same for a president's family — but with the added anxiety that comes whenever someone from the first family is involved. There is always a chance, however slim it may be, that something will happen to the graduate.

I don't know how many children of sitting presidents have graduated from college in our history, but I do know that nothing has happened to mar those occasions. They have all gone off as smooth as clockwork.

Such was not the case in the episode of West Wing that first aired on this night in 2003, "Commencement." The president's youngest daughter, Zoey (Elisabeth Moss), was graduating from Georgetown University, and her father (Martin Sheen) was to deliver an address at commencement. He was still wrestling with what to say when the big day arrived.

And there were a lot of other things going on. Toby (Richard Schiff) and his ex–wife were expecting a baby at any time, and Toby wanted them to remarry. He wanted it so much he had taken the step of investing in a house that his ex had told him was her dream home.

Primarily, though, Washington Post reporter Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield) had gotten wind of something the president really wanted to keep under wraps — the fact that, one year prior, he had ordered the assassination of the defense minister of a fictional Middle Eastern country who had been planning terrorist acts against the United States — among them destroying the Golden Gate Bridge.

At the time, the White House had manipulated news flow to bolster the impression that the United States had not been involved. That had eroded considerably, though.

Of course, there was also the matter of finding a replacement for the vice president, who had just resigned.

If that seems implausible, remember that within a decade of the passage of the 25th Amendment, which provided a procedure for filling a vacancy in the vice presidency, that procedure would be used not once but twice. It hasn't been used since, but odds are that it will one day. Nevertheless, no one thought back in 1967 that it would be used in 1973, when Gerald Ford was selected to replace Spiro Agnew, and 1974, when Nelson Rockefeller was chosen to replace Ford after Ford became president.

History is like that. When one event occurs, people know it probably will play a role in another event, but they never know how soon that will be. The Kennedy assassination in 1963 was the catalyst for the 25th Amendment. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, served with no vice president for more than a year — until he had won the 1964 election with Hubert Humphrey as his running mate.

Humphrey, therefore, was the occupant of the vice presidency when the 25th Amendment was approved, and few people probably thought there was a need for it. After all, the nation had been through such periods before, but the 25th Amendment spelled out that procedure — along with providing a line of succession.

Back to the West Wing timeline, which dealt with the 25th Amendment in the last episode of the 2002–2003 season.

Fast forward a year. Five suspected terrorists who had been under surveillance had disappeared, and the feds were under heightened alert.

Thrown into the mix was the fact that Zoey was planning to leave for France after commencement to spend three months in the French countryside.

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But she never got there. At a party on graduation night, she was abducted and one of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect her was shot and killed.

West Wing had a reputation for being "The Left Wing" for its political slant, but the truth was that it was extraordinarily realistic. Even conservatives had to concede that.

And while it may seem unlikely that a president's child could become ensnared in a global political situation such as the one depicted 15 years ago tonight, it is really no less likely than many of the things we have witnessed in our nation's history.

An Administrative Change of Life

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On this night 10 years ago, the West Wing was winding down its seven–year run. A new president was about to take over, and Martin Sheen's crew was making post–administration plans, both personal and professional.

I was in the midst of my own transition, as most West Wing fans were, I suppose. I was wondering what I would do with myself after the series went off the air. What I saw on this night in 2006 made me wish there was going to be another season so I could see what happened with those characters after they finished what C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) called "the first line of my obituary."

We sort of got a peek into that in the final episode — but I will write about that next Saturday on the 10th anniversary of the West Wing's series finale.

The viewers were getting set up for that with the episode that aired 10 years ago tonight, "Institutional Memory." As I say, everyone in Martin Sheen's administration was preparing to vacate for Jimmy Smits' incoming administration.

But not entirely. Some folks from the Bartlet (Sheen) administration were being asked to stay on — chief among them being C.J., who started the series as press secretary and ended it as chief of staff. Now the Santos (Smits) administration wanted to make use of her experience.

The trouble was so did a wealthy mogul — a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates sort of character — who wanted to use his wealth to benefit people and offered to give C.J. $10 billion to "fix" whatever she thought was the greatest problem of her time.

That was the offer that appealed to her, but Smits had given her the "your president needs you" speech — OK, it was a Reader's Digest condensed version, but that took away none of its impact — especially on the relationship between C.J. and Danny the reporter (Timothy Busfield), whose intriguing interaction through the run of the series was finally beginning to blossom in the final episodes.

Understandably, though, C.J. was conflicted by her professional life, and Danny had to make her understand that he would be supportive of whatever she wanted to do. He just wanted to be part of the conversation.

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Of course, as a presidential administration winds down, there are many conversations going on, not the least of which concerns the subject of presidential pardons.

Being the history buff that I am, one of the things I always liked about the West Wing was the way it educated its viewers while entertaining them. Sometimes the education was rather blunt, but it was subtle in this episode of the West Wing. Outgoing presidents routinely issue pardons, and the subject of a pardon for former White House speechwriter Toby (Richard Schiff), who was fired after he leaked classified information to save the lives of some astronauts, was the subject of conversation. Toby's ex–wife Andie (Kathleen York) was one of those who lobbied C.J. for a pardon.

When he discussed the subject of pardons with C.J. — and after confirming that Toby's name did not appear on the list of applicants for presidential pardons — Charlie (Dule Hill) casually remarked that the president "could do whatever he wants to in this area," including adding his own names to the list of pardons.

Sometimes in our modern political climate it is hard to remember just how prescient the West Wing often was. Toby's national defense leak was only one example. More than one writer has observed how closely the election that put Barack Obama in the White House mirrored the election of Jed Bartlet's successor in the series' final season.

C.J. went to visit Toby, who confirmed in a rather awkward exchange that he had not applied for a pardon, and then they had the kind of conversation that flows easily between friends — and, as Andie pointed out to C.J., they had been friends for a long time, long before the leak.

C.J. and Danny were friends before they were lovers. The challenge they faced in the episode that aired a decade ago tonight suggested, as the final credits began to roll, that they taking tentative steps toward being a mutually supportive couple.

Maybe one day the West Wing will have a reunion show, and we can find out more about what became of those characters after the next week's season finale.

Letting Bartlet Be Bartlet

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Mrs. Landingham (Kathryn Joosten): You don't get enough roughage.

Bartlet (Martin Sheen): I know I'd like to beat you senseless with a head of cabbage. I know that for damn sure.

Mrs. Landingham: Once again, you display an immaturity about vegetables that I think is not at all presidential.

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I cannot honestly say that I know who said, "Let Reagan be Reagan," or what the circumstances were when it was said. I want to say that it was said when he was trying get Robert Bork on the Supreme Court — but I really don't know that for certain.

Perhaps it originated even earlier.

Whenever it was said, it was almost certainly said by one of Ronald Reagan's advisers at a time when Reagan's supporters were under the impression (whether rightly or wrongly) that he was being stymied by some people, and they wanted him to be free to say what he really believed.

It was a rallying cry that I heard from time to time during Reagan's presidency in the 1980s; in the intervening years, it has become something of a cliche, suggesting that a chief executive — a governor or a president — needs to be more assertive and proactive in his advocacy of (or opposition to) something or someone. Anyway, it was a pretty good inspiration for an episode of the West Wing that first aired 15 years ago tonight.

The overall theme of the story was the White House wasn't accomplishing much, and the West Wing staff was drifting into a malaise, just sort of spinning its wheels. At one point, Josh (Bradley Whitford) observed to Toby (Richard Schiff), "Our second year doesn't seem to be going a whole lot better than our first, does it?"

"No," Toby replied.

That really summed things up.

The episode began disarmingly with the president about to speak before an organization of trout fishermen, and speech writers Toby and Sam (Rob Lowe) discussing whether to change a reference to a "magnificent vista" that the president was supposed to be seeing at an outdoor event — because of what appeared to be an increasing chance of rain that might force the event indoors.

As it turned out, it did rain, and the event was moved indoors — but, after all their talk, neither Toby nor Sam changed the reference, and the president said it, anyway.

That was one side story. There were always side stories in West Wing episodes. Sometimes you really had to be on your toes to figure out their relevance to the overall theme before that relevance was revealed to the audience. In the interim, though, there was always snappy dialogue, like the exchange between Josh and his secretary Donna (Janel Moloney) after Josh had been informed by House Republicans that, if the president nominated the people he was likely to nominate for two openings on the Federal Election Commission, not only would they reject the nominees but they would send all sorts of pet bills to the president's desk, bills that he was sure not to like ... starting with one making English the official language of the United States.

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"Are we for it or against it?" Donna asked.

"Donna ..." Josh began.

"I mean, we're not in favor of making another language the official language, are we?" she asked. "Like Dutch or something?"

There was also a side story about gays in military — a topic which may seem a little dated now but was straight from the headlines in the morning paper in April 2000. The White House and the military representatives who were assigned to come to some sort of agreement were at an impasse when Admiral Fitzwallace (John Amos) dropped by.

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Fitzwallace asked the military reps what they thought about gays in the military, then proceeded to answer for them — or at least finish their answers for them. One said, "We're not prejudiced toward homosexuals."

"You just don't want to see them serving in the armed forces," Fitz said.

"No, sir, I don't," the military rep said.

"Because they pose a threat to unit discipline and cohesion."

"Yes, sir," the other rep said.

"That's what I think, too," the admiral said. "I also think the military wasn't designed to be an instrument of social change."

"Yes, sir," the first rep said.

"Problem with that," the admiral observed, "is that's what they were saying about me 50 years ago. Blacks shouldn't serve with whites. It would disrupt the unit. You know what? It did disrupt the unit. The unit got over it. The unit changed. I'm an admiral in the U.S. Navy and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Beat that with a stick."

But the main story had to do with media consultant Mandy (Moira Kelly), who had written a memo concerning the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the president and the White House staff when she worked for one of the president's party rivals. The memo had been leaked after she went to work for the White House; she had no idea who had it, only that it was out there somewhere.

C.J. (Allison Janney) tried to find out who had the memo — and discovered that White House reporter Danny (Timothy Busfield) had it and was planning to write about it. It was clear early in the series that Danny had feelings for C.J., and I would venture to say that most West Wing viewers knew that C.J. harbored a simmering attraction to Danny beneath the surface.

But I really admired the writers on this episode. Danny and C.J. had a frank conversation about the relationship between the White House and the reporters who cover it, about what news is and is not — and, as a journalist, I appreciated it and found a lot in it that was true. It probably would have been easy for the writers to allow Danny to compromise his principles in order to curry favor with C.J. — and I have no doubt there are journalists who would do that.

Instead, both Danny and C.J. responded the way I would hope people in such a position would respond. Neither backed down, and both left the conversation with some grudging respect for the other.

The whole thing reached critical mass in the last scene, a showdown between the president and his chief of staff, Leo (John Spencer) that re–defined the objectives of the fictional Bartlet administration.

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"We're going to change the level of public debate in this country," Leo told the staffers. "And let that be our legacy."

And the stage was set for the first of the West Wing's incomparable season finales.