The Lame Duck Congress

"The Lame Duck Congress"
The West Wing episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 6
Directed by	Jeremy Kagan
Teleplay by	Aaron Sorkin
Story by	Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr.
Production code	226206
Original air date	November 8, 2000
Guest appearance(s)
Timothy Busfield Emily Procter Eugene Lazarev Mike Starr NiCole Robinson David Kaufman Richard Tanner Tegan West Brian Stepanek Wayne Wilderson
Season 2 episodes

"The Lame Duck Congress" is the 28th episode of The West Wing which aired November 8, 2000, the day following the 2000 United States Presidential election.

Plot

As the last days of the lame-duck Congress roll forward, Sam Seaborn outlines a long list of Senate committee reassignments that are going to take place under the incoming GOP-led body of law, finishing with the news that a Republican opponent of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is going to head up the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has made it clear he will not allow the Treaty to come up for voting. Sam's idea that they should try to call a lame-duck session of Congress to pass the Treaty before this happens gets the OK. Communications Director Toby Ziegler leads the effort but is stunned when he learns that recently defeated Senator Marino (D-PA) will not vote for the Treaty, because he was its primary sponsor during his Senate days. Senator Marino meets with Toby and explains that he will respect the views of the voters who sent him home, and the White House simply gives up on the Treaty for now.

Chief of Staff Leo McGarry and Press Secretary C.J. Cregg have to do some fancy diplomatic footwork when a very pro-Western but equally pro-alcohol Ukrainian politician shows up at the White House demanding to meet with the President. Leo's tip about how the Dalai Lama was able to "accidentally" have a meeting with a former President sets up a quick discussion between the President and the Ukrainian, who leaves the White House happy to know that they look forward to working with him if/when he becomes his country's leader, and leaves the President and Leo happy that they have avoided a major international incident.

Sam responds to Leo's new guideline for shorter policy summaries by working with Ainsley Hayes on a plan to prevent small-business fraud, but she impresses Sam so much he adopts all of her ideas and sends the plan forward to Leo and the President.

Production and creation

The story line about the Ukrainian politician was suggested by Marlin Fitzwater, who had been hired as a consultant for the show, and was based on the events during the period Fitzwater was working for President George H. W. Bush.^[1] Boris Yeltsin had requested a meeting with President Bush while Mikhail Gorbachev was still the leader of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin and Bush met in the national security advisor's office so that the White House could say that he had never been in the Oval Office.^[1]

Analysis

Kimberly A. Williams believes that the "The Lame Duck Congress" is series creator Aaron Sorkin's critique of the 2000 presidential candidates' approach to dealing with changes occurring in Eastern Europe at the time. She writes that the position was "although Eastern Europe reformers are 'crazy', they are 'our kind of crazy'; therefore the United States should stay the course in Eastern Europe."^[2]

References

1 2 Inside The West Wing: An Unauthorized Look at Television's Smartest Show By Paul Challen
↑ Williams, Kimberly. "Imagining Russia: Making Feminist Sense of American Nationalism in U.S ...". SUNY. Retrieved July 18, 2012.

External links

The West Wing Episode Guide

The West Wing

Main characters

Recurring characters

Episodes

Season 1	"Pilot" "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" "A Proportional Response" "Five Votes Down" "The Crackpots and These Women" "Mr. Willis of Ohio" "The State Dinner" "Enemies" "The Short List" "In Excelsis Deo" "Lord John Marbury" "He Shall, from Time to Time..." "Take out the Trash Day" "Take This Sabbath Day" "Celestial Navigation" "20 Hours in L.A." "The White House Pro-Am" "Six Meetings Before Lunch" "Let Bartlet Be Bartlet" "Mandatory Minimums" "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics" "What Kind of Day Has It Been"

Season 2	"In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part I" "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part II" "The Midterms" "In This White House" "And It's Surely to Their Credit" "The Lame Duck Congress" "The Portland Trip" "Shibboleth" "Galileo" "Noël" "The Leadership Breakfast" "The Drop-In" "Bartlet's Third State of the Union" "The War at Home" "Ellie" "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail" "The Stackhouse Filibuster" "17 People" "Bad Moon Rising" "The Fall's Gonna Kill You" "18th and Potomac" "Two Cathedrals"

Season 3	"Isaac and Ishmael" "Manchester, Part I" "Manchester, Part II" "Ways and Means" "On the Day Before" "War Crimes" "Gone Quiet" "The Indians in the Lobby" "The Women of Qumar" "Bartlet for America" "H. Con-172" "100,000 Airplanes" "The Two Bartlets" "Night Five" "Hartsfield's Landing" "Dead Irish Writers" "The U.S. Poet Laureate" "Stirred" "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" "The Black Vera Wang" "We Killed Yamamoto" "Posse Comitatus"

Season 4	"20 Hours in America, Part I" "20 Hours in America, Part II" "College Kids" "The Red Mass" "Debate Camp" "Game On" "Election Night" "Process Stories" "Swiss Diplomacy" "Arctic Radar" "Holy Night" "Guns Not Butter" "The Long Goodbye" "Inauguration, Part I" "Inauguration: Over There" "The California 47th" "Red Haven's on Fire" "Privateers" "Angel Maintenance" "Evidence of Things Not Seen" "Life on Mars" "Commencement" "Twenty Five"

Season 5	"7A WF 83429" "The Dogs of War" "Jefferson Lives" "Han" "Constituency of One" "Disaster Relief" "Separation of Powers" "Shutdown" "Abu el Banat" "The Stormy Present" "The Benign Prerogative" "Slow News Day" "The Warfare of Genghis Khan" "An Khe" "Full Disclosure" "Eppur Si Muove" "The Supremes" "Access" "Talking Points" "No Exit" "Gaza" "Memorial Day"

Season 6	"NSF Thurmont" "The Birnam Wood" "Third-Day Story" "Liftoff" "The Hubbert Peak" "The Dover Test" "A Change Is Gonna Come" "In the Room" "Impact Winter" "Faith Based Initiative" "Opposition Research" "365 Days" "King Corn" "The Wake Up Call" "Freedonia" "Drought Conditions" "A Good Day" "La Palabra" "Ninety Miles Away" "In God We Trust" "Things Fall Apart" "2162 Votes"

Season 7	"The Ticket" "The Mommy Problem" "Message of the Week" "Mr. Frost" "Here Today" "The Al Smith Dinner" "The Debate" "Undecideds" "The Wedding" "Running Mates" "Internal Displacement" "Duck and Cover" "The Cold" "Two Weeks Out" "Welcome to Wherever You Are" "Election Day" "Election Day Part II" "Requiem" "Transition" "The Last Hurrah" "Institutional Memory" "Tomorrow"

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