Mr. Tribbey? I'd like to do well on this, my first assignment. Any advice you could give me that might point me the way of success would be, by me, appreciated.
Well, not speaking in iambic pentameter might be a step in the right direction.
S2And It's Surely to Their Credit
He was okay with it?
He thinks it's a great idea. He can't wait to meet you.
Lionel Tribbey.
Yeah.
Lionel Tribbey thinks hiring me was a great idea.
Why are you surprised?
Well, because I am a Republican and Lionel Tribbey is... incredibly not.
Lionel Tribbey is the White House Counsel. He's a brilliant and fair-minded attorney, and he will accept you on his staff because he is... well, fair-minded and because...
You haven't told him yet!
I have, in fact, not told him yet, no.
So you lied to me just then.
I'm a politician, Ainsley. Of course I lied to you just then.
TTribby
[storming into the Oval Office] Mr. President, have you lost what little was left of your mind? I can't possibly work like this!
Oh, dear God.
TTechnician
Cut!
I had it!
Excuse me, sir, is this a bad time?
It's a bit of a bad time, Lionel...
Well, forgive me, sir, but when you have a few moments, I would like to discuss the hiring of a blonde and leggy fascist whose knowledge does not include the proper order of the alphabet for positions of the White House Counsel's office.
And we will, Lionel, but right now I don't know if you noticed but there are thirty or forty other people in the room, many of whom have donated significant amounts of money to the Democratic Party, so perhaps you could put a tighter grip on your horses and we will talk about it later.
Yes. Well. Good morning, everyone! Thank you, Mr. President.
[walks out of the room in complete silence]
Well, obviously, Lionel Tribbey is a brilliant lawyer whom we cannot live without, or there would be very little reason not to put him in prison.
S2The Lame Duck Congress
Charlie!
Yes, sir.
Can I have a couple of aspirin or a weapon of some kind to kill people with?
Even when they're here in session, getting a hundred senators in line is still like trying to get cats to walk in a parade.
I don't need your help. I'm asking for your help so let's not make a federal...
[into her phone] Dad, it's me. Sam's asking for my help.
Put the phone down.
[into her phone] Gotta go, dad, I need to help Sam.
That must have rolled them in the aisles back in Georgia.
I'm from North Carolina.
Wherever it was you studied baton twirling.
That'd be Harvard Law School.
So, I'm being used.
Yes.
As a dupe.
Yes.
How am I supposed to feel about that?
How do you usually feel about that?
My value here is that I have no value.
You have enormous value to me. You have absolutely no value to Eastern Europe.
Why's a test-ban treaty so important? Let me tell you. In 1974, India set off a peaceful nuclear explosion. Indira Gandhi herself said they had no intention of building a bomb, they just wanted to know that they could. Twenty years later India sets off five nuclear explosions. Who gets nervous? Pakistan. And when Pakistan gets nervous, everybody get nervous. You know why? 'Cause we're all gonna die.
I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to spill anything. I'm not going to get Republican juice on you. I'm just going to sit there and learn.
Look...
From the master, Sam, I want to learn from the master.
[stopping] See, women think that kind of thing works, but it doesn't.
[steps close] It really does, Sam.
[Sam looks at her. They start walking again.]
I let you come to the Hill, you'll summarize my memo?
I'll use punctuation and everything. You might even get extra credit.
You know we forget sometimes, in all the talk about democracy we forget it's not a democracy, it's a republic. People don't make the decisions, they choose the people who make the decisions. Could they do a better job choosing? Yeah. But when you consider the alternative...
S2The Portland Trip
The Assistant Energy Secretary is flying to Portland in the middle of the night so he can meet with me on Air Force One on the way back?
Yes sir.
The day-to-day experience of my life has changed in many ways since taking this job.
Oratory should raise your heart rate. Oratory should blow the doors off the place. We should be talking about not being satisfied with past solutions. We should be talking about a permanent revolution.
Where have I heard that?
Permanent Revolution?
Yeah.
I got it from a book.
What book?
The Little Red Book
You think we should quote Mao Tse-tung?
We do need a permanent revolution.
Still, I think we'll stay away from quoting Communists.
You think a Communist never wrote an elegant phrase? How do you think they got everyone to be Communist?
A long flight across the night. You know why late flights are good? Because we cease to be earthbound and burdened with practicality. Asking important questions. Talking about the idea that nobody has thought about yet. Put it a different way...
Be poets.
I have an excellent sense about these things.
Actually, you have no sense about these things. You have no vibe, you have terrible taste in men, and your desire to be coupled up will always and forever drown out any sense of self or self-worth that you may have.
You're a downer, you know that? I'm calling you Deputy Downer from now on.
[asking why C.J is going on the Portland Trip] Are you being punished?
I'm not being punished. I'm going on the trip.
If the whole bus goes off the record, will you tell us why you're going on the trip?
[hesitating] I made fun of Notre Dame. [the journalists collectively groaned] Usually I get away with it.
They're playing Michigan tomorrow.
I know that now.
You can't do that when they're playing Michigan.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's The West Wing pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.