More college kids think they'll see UFOs than Social Security checks.
But they don't tell you how many believe in UFOs; that's the number we ought to be worried about.
“Slow News Day” · Season 5
In this episode: Josiah Bartlet (5), Toby Ziegler (4), C.J. Cregg (3), Josh Lyman (2), Leo McGarry (2)
If we're not running offense, we're running defense, and if we're playing defense, then there's some clever sports analogy that explains what happens then....
We're screwed.
That'll do...
A little tough love's what these people need. If that doesn't work, I'm moving on to Molotov cocktails.
Social Security is the third rail of American politics. Touch it, and you die.
That's 'cause the third rail's where all the power is.
We've been over this. We need a hard news announcement each and every day or the press runs amok!
[about Social Security] If it becomes public we've even discussed this, both sides will go crazy. It'll jeopardize our whole agenda on the Hill.
What if I do it? I'll do all the negotiating. You'll have total deniability. No one else in this building has to know.
And if it blows up, I'm supposed to pretend we've never met?
We'll always have Paris. [beat] Mr. President, life expectancy's rising. The biggest generation, ever, is retiring and we don't have the money! Every year we wait means we have to cut deeper, take away more, 'til Social Security's not enough to live on... 'til retirement's a one- way ticket to a flop house. We have an opening. There's seventeen ways to fix it. Twenty years of blue-ribbon commissions have told us how. This isn't a government program, it is a moral covenant. We don't want to be the administration that saves it from oblivion? We don't want that legacy?
Social Security is the third rail of American politics. Touch it, and you die.
That's 'cause the third rail's where all the power is.
There's a reason we have a chain of command. So people don't take flyers and I don't hand you their resignations.
I wanted to believe he could do it. I wanted to believe as much as he did.
This isn't Never-never Land, sir. Believing is not enough.
You would've stopped it.
Because it's my job.
It's my life, Leo. I'm the one who's accountable. And not in the morning papers, not in the Democratic cloakroom, but in 50 or a 100 years when Tuesday's poll samples have crumbled into dust.
You can't will yourself a legacy.
You think there's a room at the Smithsonian for guys who never even tried?
Closest we've been to a deal in 20 years and it breaks down over who we approached first.
If you approach the Republicans, he's a right-wing sell out, if you approach the Democrats, he's a fire-breathing partisan.
Hard enough caving on principle without looking like you're caving on principle.
And, we have a little problem called the Wall Street Journal.
We don't take credit.
What?
We don't take credit at all.
It's the only way.
They approached each other. Bi-partisan down the line. No one can say I'm setting anyone up.
Mr. President, a victory like this comes along once in a generation.
We'll have practically saved the New Deal and no one will even know we were in the room.
We'll know. And if we don't do this... if this system collapses, which is what'll happen, if we go back to breadlines, if growing old in America means growing poor again ... we'll know that, too.
There is no such thing as an invisible legacy, sir.
You have to know you'd be giving it away.
All day we've been talking about my legacy, my portrait, what's going to be carved on my tombstone. Maybe we pay a little more attention to what's being rendered. And the rendering takes care of itself.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's The West Wing pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.