The West Wing · Season 5
Congressman Wendt, who single-handedly blocked our tax credit to expand child care to working families, is attempting to bind the feet of your entire gender with his paleo-chauvinist stay-at-home mom tax cut.
I'm going to read the bill and supporting materials.
What if you just kick up a cloud of dust about the revenue impact and mention that he's the Darth Vader of child care?
[to Ed & Larry] This meeting's about politics. Facts won't help.
What do I need to catch up on?
The President signed a school vouchers bill for D.C.
Are you kidding? I leave the building for an hour and he switches parties.
Promise me something.
What?
You'll never let them make a list of my screw-ups. They wouldn't have enough paper.
CJ.
Yeah?
Don't go on TV with Taylor Reid again unless you're going to tell him what an idiotic, shallow, uninformed, and lying punk he is.
I think he knows that.
Check with Margaret about the Mural Room.
The Vice President has it.
For what?
He's the Vice President, Toby. I don't have to justify his using a room.
Of course not. For what?
You can tell the President he doesn't have to worry about the book. I'm not going to try to make him look bad. I just wanted to get this scandal behind me, so I can get on with my life.
Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Well... I'm gonna call it Full Disclosure. What do you think? Good title?
Am I going to be in the book?
Yes. Not mentioning you would be kind of strange, don't you think? I mean, next to the President and the Vice President, you're the most visible person working in the White House.
I'd prefer not to be.
C.J., you've got nothing to worry about, I promise.
[C.J. turns to leave.]
What are you going to do in the campaign when the stories start coming out?
Those stories?
No. The other women.
I haven't decided to run, I really...
Because there have been other women, right? Lots of women, right? Because the way you came on to me... way too smooth, way too practiced.
C.J., that was ten years ago. I'm sorry...
When you run for President, the press is going to find some of those women. And if you try to attack them, if you get your opposition research team working on them, if you try to destroy them, if you try to say they're all bimbos and liars, then I'll be standing right there with them, and I'll be ready to take anything you or your people throw at me, anything. So don't make me tell the truth about you because it will be the whole truth.
I'm sorry but can we really justify spending $800,000 on 'A Bio-Cultural Approach to the Study of Female Sexual Fantasy and Genital Arousal'?
How can we afford not to?
Would you like me to do interviews with the Press Corps?
God, no. They're the most cynical bastards on the planet. You need to get beyond the Washington echo chamber and speak right to the people.
This conversation would be a whole lot easier if I weren't fighting my way through a cloud of Obsession.
There's no cloud.
It's about to precipitate out. It's about to rain Obsession.
You still smarting I had to carry your ass through Con Law?
You did not have to carry--
You thought strict scrutiny was a pickup technique.
Hey, it worked on Pam Sussman. I mean, not that well. How is your lovely wife?
So, what was it? The tube top to meet the Queen of England, or the low-rise jeans with the North Korean delegation?
Mrs. Bartlet, the press didn't know what to make of you before the MS became public. You've never been the traditional hat-knitting President's wife.
Oh, shoot. Was that in the handbook? Maybe just get me a photographer and seven years' worth of yarn.
Lang? Isn't she a lefty?
Yes. We want the left flank sufficiently mollified and the right flank sufficiently panicked so as to inspire a little conciliation on all flanks.
If... If we were gonna try this. What would be the plan?
We give the President and Leo the name. We bring Christopher Mulready in. We bring Lang back in. Hopefully the two of them woo the pants off the President, and he agrees to the deal without noticing he's standing in the gaze of history, pantless.
I hate to do this, but it's Rina, sir. The girl in the dress with the flowers--
Just now?
Yes.
What'd I call her?
Lana.
Who's Lana?
I'm guessing an exotic dancer from your spotty youth.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's The West Wing pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
