Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
NIA: Hi, Aughie.
Aughie: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
NIA: Well, I'd be fine if I could tell time, I have time problems these days.
Aughie: Do we need to go back?
NIA: I'm struggling seasonally I think, a good way to put it. Not so much with hours on the clock but so much with seasons.
Aughie: We need to go back to maybe kindergarten or first grade where we were we learned the seasons.
NIA: We learn to put the podcast episodes out in order of the season. Yes. Go ahead, Aughie.
Aughie: You're about to listen to or read the transcript for a podcast episode that we recorded a couple of months ago. Our intention was to have a sum or a favorites, where each episode would be a discussion of some of our favorite things related to government and politics. They weren't our normal fare of government documents or political science or facts.
NIA: They were facts, they were pretty much fact-free in most instances in terms of how the government runs or based in government documents which are generally what we do.
Aughie: Yes, and our intention was to record a number of these episodes and then release them during the summer.
NIA: For a get to know you summary of our summer favorites so that you can get to know us a little more personally of what we think of when we think of favorites. All good plans.
Aughie: The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, right?
NIA: Yeah, and in this instance one of us man, no one of us is a mouse. I didn't want to take away your manhood by saying we were mice, we're both mice.
Aughie: The quote though is from Dickens, right?
NIA: Right.
Aughie: Anyways, so were recorded these episodes, our intention was to go ahead and release them during the summer. However, we received a bunch of emails from faithful listeners who wanted to know if and or when we were going to have podcast episodes, about the recently completed Supreme Court term that finished up the last week of June.
NIA: The reasonably non-controversial, completely boring nothing else after in the whole thing US Supreme Court.
Aughie: Yes.
NIA: That's so when you mean, right?
Aughie: Yes, exactly.
NIA: Several of our readers slash listeners were on fire basically it were like, oh my God you have to address this.
Aughie: What we did listeners is we scrapped or summer of favorites. But we didn't scrap it we delayed release of those episodes so what follows is one of those episodes.
NIA: Thank you for your patience for us with our timing, and let's work through our fall of favorites.
Aughie: Yes.
NIA: We'll come back with regularly scheduled episodes of normal list.
Aughie: Yes, where are we focused on government documents, government processes, things in the news.
NIA: Facts and figures and all the things that are true.
Aughie: Yes.
Aughie: Instead of all the things that are our opinions which you may or may not be true.
Aughie: True
NIA: Thanks, Aughie.
Aughie: Thank you, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm fine.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say you're my favorite.
J. Aughenbaugh: Why?
N. Rodgers: You just.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, thanks Nia. Moment of sentimentality, then it dawned on me. You actually did that because we are starting our summer of favorites. Is that okay?
N. Rodgers: Yes. It is this time we're starting with West. Why would we not start with West Wing? The reality of the two of us is that we already talked about probably almost all the episodes at one point or another. But it's clearly a favorite of ours. But you have actually a real reason why people would watch political television. It's not just because it's fun and cool.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, Nia and I are definitely the product of an American generation weaned on television. Both of us went to school and we would go home and then we would watch TV. But focusing on politics and TV shows or movies or songs is part of a body of literature that political scientists have developed over the years known as political socialization. How do people get socialized to think about politics? Media is one of those agents of socialization. It's how our beliefs and values get shaped. Whether it'd be about politics or how we think about other people, etc. One of the most prominent political socialization agents is the media, particularly television, movies, books, and music. If you think about Nia, how are you and I came to maturity in regards to politics. One of the most influential TV Shows for us, and if I daresay, or generation, was a TV Show called The West Wing, which appeared on NBC for seven years from September of 1999 through May of 2006.
N. Rodgers: Listeners, if you're thinking, but they're too old for 1999 to have been effective on them or affecting them. I would like to put out there that I think that part of what happens with socialization is that you have to come to it at the right time in your life for it to sink, and take hold. I was not politically active when I was 19. I was politically active in the sense that if a cute boy invited me to a political thing, I went. But I was not living an adult view of politics at that point. By the time you get to 2000s. This is going to show my age. Sorry, folks is just how it is. In 1999 I was 32 years old. Which is when I had established my career, I had started to settlement and issues started to really mean stuff to me. Because taxes and home ownership and all of those things that are built into the political system and into the way that you perceive who should be President. All that stuff starts to really take hold at that age I think that's why this particular show get hold of me in that time.
J. Aughenbaugh: For me Nia I was more probably politically active or aware than most young people. In high school I actually did volunteer work for political campaigns, I went to undergrad and my master's, both were in political science. But when you're talking about the late 1990s, the early part of this millennium. Again, I just gone through some rough patches in my life and I was teaching, and I was trying to figure out ways to go ahead and expose my students to stuff that I was teaching in my classes that were perhaps more palatable to them. All of a sudden there's this TV Show. It was smart and it was written well. Even if you didn't agree with the politics of the main characters, it was written so well and had a knowledge about the American political system. I was just like, this is fun. Again, for many of our listeners, might sense, my definition of fun might be different. But again, one of the great things about the West Wing was that it was written so well.
N. Rodgers: Acted so well. It was in part that ensemble cast really worked well together. We should note, for listeners who are not aware, Aaron Zircon was a drug addict and struggled. A lot of while writing West Wing and Sport, I did a show that had come before that. He struggled a lot with that. The actors had to learn lines very quickly sometimes because he was writing, right up to the deadline of filming, changing things and moving things around and stuff like that. This was a talented group of people who've worked together. That is not to say he did not do good work because clearly he did, at least in our opinion. But he was also troublesome. At that time in his life, he had, I could only come to the airport with mushrooms. Are you bringing in mushrooms in the LA. I was like, just making unfortunate life choices.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia mentioned the founder of the show, Aaron Zircon. Zircon was a big name in Hollywood in part because before he came up with the idea of the West Wing, he did a previous show called Sports Night, which was a fictitious representation of what was then the new company known as ESPN.
N. Rodgers: It was their sports center. It was a takeoff of sport center. Aaron Zircon is a brilliant writer. He goes on to do the social network. He goes on to do things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Before sports night in West when he was the screenwriter for a Few Good Men.
N. Rodgers: That's right.
J. Aughenbaugh: I believe he was also the screenwriter for Nia one of your favorite political movies, The American President starring Michael Douglas.
N. Rodgers: There is established chops there. Then the actors in the show have all become, I think many of them have become Hollywood standard bearers in terms of actors Alice and Janie [inaudible] course.
J. Aughenbaugh: The basic plot of the Show it's centered on a fictional Jed Bartlett, presidential administration. Bartlett was a former Democratic governor from the state of New Hampshire. In originally the show was pitched to NBC as focusing on the main speech writer, an actor played by Rob Lowe. But when they started filming it. They quickly came to the conclusion that it should focus on the presidential administration.
N. Rodgers: Martin Sheen I think it was only supposed to be in a couple of episodes in it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Martin Sheen was a well-known television and movie actor.
N. Rodgers: Apocalypse Now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Apocalypse Now. If you watch any TV series from the late '60s, early 1970s, he showed up as a guest star in so many different shows. You mentioned Allison Janie was the press secretary. Then you have Richard Shift played Toby, who was the director of communications. You had Bradley, what's his last name?
N. Rodgers: I'm looking at Woodford. Thank you. I was going to say Woodford and that's not right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Brad Woodford who plays Josh, who's the Deputy Chief of Staff. The chief of staff was played by the well-known character actor John Spencer. Ms. Bartlett was played by another great female actress.
N. Rodgers: From stage as well as film. Charlie Young is played by Delay Hill, who goes on to be in Psycho for people who, sorry, psych.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's psych on USA network.
N. Rodgers: Younger folks might know him from that genome alone and plays Donna Moss. Who is Josh's.
J. Aughenbaugh: Secretary and they becomes love interests by the end of the series.
N. Rodgers: She has actually the most important part in the show, I would argue because she is the every man and a lot of things get explained to her. She knows dialogue.
J. Aughenbaugh: She knows so little about politics when she used the first work for the Bartlett campaign.
N. Rodgers: That is certain explaining to us.
J. Aughenbaugh: She asked the questions that many of us would go ahead and ask.
N. Rodgers: That's where we get her eye in some ways, I would argue she's the most important character in the entire show. Can we talk about our favorite episodes can be documented?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, before we get to our favorite episodes, there's one other character that should not go unrecognized.
N. Rodgers: Who have I missed?
J. Aughenbaugh: Mrs. Blattingham, who plays the Secretary to President Bartlett.
N. Rodgers: She's highly influential.
J. Aughenbaugh: She was with him when he was governor and she is the infamous gatekeeper for any bureaucratic office. She was just absolutely phenomenal.
N. Rodgers: She also in the first episode. The first episode of the show gives us a long shot following Leo as he's walking to his office through the Whitehouse and he interacts with the guard. He interacts with all the staffers that are hanging around and he walks through the Oval because the chief of staff's office is next to the Oval. He walks through the Oval and he is explaining something to Mrs. Landonham, and he calls the President a clutch and she says, not in this room sir, because she sets the bar at he is the president and you can insult him anywhere else but not in the Oval office.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. You just can't.
N. Rodgers: In the first episode of the president is injured because he is riding a bike lent to him by Leo and he comes to, and I quote, "A sudden arboreal stop." Which means he rides the bike into a tree and that's what CJ asks him. What am I supposed to save the press? And he says, I don't know, tell them that the president came to a sudden arboreal stop. Which sets the tone. But it's a long shot that's filmed in one go and that has to be the way the West Wing. They filmed a lot of long shot takes where they would follow people through rooms and the actors would divide and then come back together and is an interesting way of filming. But it's a wonderful setup for us to that this show is going to be both humerus, but also serious. What do you say when the president has a [inaudible] how do you portray that? Because when you think about it, if the president is injured in some way, there's going to be immediate from the other side when is he competent to serve, did he get a concussion when he hit the tree? Blah, blah, blah. There's all this and you don't want that to be the story of the day. You are the administration. Didn't President Biden fall down at some point, relatively recently, he just tripped over something.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or think about, for instance.
N. Rodgers: Or Gerald Ford who took a beating on that for years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or the fact that in some ways, some of the writers for the show had worked in the Clinton administration. One of the more famous interactions between President Clinton in somebody in the Oval Office was between President Clinton and then federal judge who he was considering nominated to the Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer. Who was up for consideration for the Supreme Court position that went to Ruth Bader, Ginsburg. Breyer the week before his interview with President Clinton, had a bicycle accident. He ran into a tree and it showed up to the interview somewhat less than on his top game because he was taking pain meds and he did interview very well.
N. Rodgers: There's an episode where Bartlett is on pain meds.
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless, what follows the rest of this podcast episode, we limited ourselves to just two episodes.
N. Rodgers: Side note, spoilers. We should have said that at the very beginning of this and yes, we did at the beginning of every other episode. Sorry, we forgot. There are herein lies spoilers. If you've seen it. Turn off this episode, go watch all of the West Wing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's only what? Twenty two episodes per year for seven years. Come on, go binge-watch it all and then come back and listen to this episode because we don't want to ruin it for you if you haven't watched it. But there's about to be spoiled.
J. Aughenbaugh: We limited ourselves to two episodes each.
N. Rodgers: Which was horrible.
J. Aughenbaugh: I probably spent as much time [inaudible] . As I have on any research notes that I prepare for these podcast episodes. This was extremely difficult. But Nia, let's lead off with your two favorite episodes.
N. Rodgers: I cheated because that's what I do. I cheated by getting two episodes from one. Because I actually have three episodes technically. They're called the big block of cheese episodes. The way they start is Leo coming in and saying, isn't Jefferson who had the big block of cheese?
J. Aughenbaugh: No its Andrew Jackson.
N. Rodgers: Andrew Jackson had a big block of cheese and invited anyone who wanted to come and eat. But when he goes into this big long speech and they hate big block of cheese day because big block of cheese say means people who do not normally get access to the White House staff, headed on big block of cheese date. These are usually very small, very narrow special interest groups who would not normally carry enough.
J. Aughenbaugh: Weight [inaudible]
N. Rodgers: To get time with the staffers, there's two episodes, cracked pots and these women, which is season 1, episode 5, and somebody's going to emergency, somebody's going to jail. Which is by the way, a takeoff of Don Henry song.
J. Aughenbaugh: Don Henry song, yes.
N. Rodgers: Season 2 episode 16. But they are special interests. In one of them there is the Peters projection. For people who don't know the Peters projection, so what you see on a globe or in Annapolis is the Mercator projection of the planet. The Mercator drawing helps people figure out which way they need to get in their boat and go so they don't end up in the Caribbean thinking it's the Indies Columbus, we're looking at. You don't get lost. It's basically so you don't get lost.
J. Aughenbaugh: You don't end up in Greenland hoping that you're going to go ahead and end up in the Bahamas.
N. Rodgers: That's what the Mercator does for you. The thing about the Mercator map is that it is wrong in size. It can`t see United States and Africa as the same size. If you grow up with that map. You don't realize how tiny the United States is compared to how enormous Africa is. They're just not even scalable, totally different. But Mercator doesn't do that. Mercator also puts Europe in the center of the map. Why? Because Mercator was European, and because all of the colonial powers were based in Europe. They showed this map to CJ and they're like Peter this is the Peters projection. It has fidelity of size, it has fidelity of location, and it shows that Europe is actually quite a bit at the top of the globe, and to the right. She says what is that? He's like, this is where you've been living this whole time. She fricks around little bit.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There's that one. There's also in one of these episodes, a wolves only highway. They want to build a highway for wolves. The natural question that gets asked about that is how do you keep the other animals from using it? But what they're basically saying is wolves habitats are being destroyed by human civilization. We need to create a space for wolves to be able to do natural wolf behaviors, which is to run up and down a long range.
J. Aughenbaugh: I like Bartlett's response when CJ is trying to sell him on the wolves only highway, and he says, "I don't have a problem with the wolves only highway. My problem is advocates then for other animals will say to us, well, why don't your favorite animals have their own highway." He goes and CJ, I don't know who pays for that. But because these interest groups have access, and these are folks that would not normally be heard by the West Wing staffers,
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's one of the great things about this episode. Toby shows up.
N. Rodgers: At a protest.
J. Aughenbaugh: At a protest.
N. Rodgers: He's mad because they don't know how to do it, right.
J. Aughenbaugh: He gets upset and he goes I don't necessarily care what you're protesting about, but you guys are going to bind with all the wrong way.
N. Rodgers: The Capitol police officer encourages him to teach them how to protest properly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because Toby shows up anything, she's just going to be able to sit there and read his newspaper. But they're doing it so poorly.
N. Rodgers: He gets mad about it once.
J. Aughenbaugh: He gets mad about it. In the classic Toby says. Because Toby, he's got the corner on self-righteousness in the Bartlett West way.
N. Rodgers: [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, the beginning of that episode of cracked pots. The cheapest staff Leo is giving out the assignments. It reminded me of being in a bureaucracy where you're being handed out assignments and you're sitting around the table with some really smart folks. Everybody's cracking wise. But the boss picks on one to make an example of. In that opening scene, Leo makes an example of Brad Woodford's character, Josh. Because everybody else is cracking wise and Leo is just letting it go. But when Josh cracks wise, Leo comes down on him hard.
N. Rodgers: Well, here's his deputy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Josh was just like, wait a minute here, everybody.
N. Rodgers: But what's funny is they start to try to trade things. I've got this, do you want to trade for that. They are not taking it in any way seriously. Leo is like, no, this is what transparent government is. Then he says something about Mercator worked really hard. His secretary worked really hard on these assignments and she's behind him and she shakes her head though. She is like, no I didn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: The staffers get an appreciation for these folks, that they would not normally.
N. Rodgers: It's a deeper discussion of the responsiveness of government. Government should listen to the narrow interest people because sometimes they have truly legitimate things to say. Sometimes they have things like I said, with the Mercator, where all of a sudden you're like, that's not actually how the globe looks. When you look from space that's not what it looks like.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I cheated because I put it in two episodes for that. Sorry Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's all right. But you've got another episode.
N. Rodgers: It was so hard for me to choose. There was this episode and there was the episode where we get the retrospective of how they all came to be on the campaign. Which is when it's in the shadow of two gunmen. That episode which is an assassination attempt. But I chose instead, Stackhouse Filibuster. One because I think people don`t.
J. Aughenbaugh: Season 2, episode 17.
N. Rodgers: Thank you. Season 2, episode 17. I think that people don't realize. I think that they don't realize what a filibuster is, or how it can hold up the government. But also that negotiation between the branches is a really important.
J. Aughenbaugh: It can come down to something that on the surface appears to be insignificant but members of Congress, no matter how controversial they are, how blowhard they are, etc members of Congress do have issues that are near and dear to them.
N. Rodgers: The cracks of this episode is that Josh negotiates a deal bipartisan support in both houses. It looks like it's going to go through a $6 billion healthcare plan.
J. Aughenbaugh: He has spent months on this folks.
N. Rodgers: He has spent months on it, negotiating, going back and forth, giving a little here, getting a little there. Doing what you need to do. But there's a senator he goes to see to get his support, Senator Stackhouse. He says to Senator Stackhouse, this is going to go through and Stackhouse says, well, I'd really like you to add something in here about autism.
J. Aughenbaugh: Josh is just over.
N. Rodgers: Josh pulls him off and says, we'll get to it another time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Stackhouse only has one vote. I'm done negotiating. I got a deal.
N. Rodgers: Stackhouse says to him, well then we'll see how that goes for you. He warns him and just blows it off because he thinks he's got it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: But he does it. Because what Stackhouse does is he filibusters.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. For those listeners who don't understand the filibuster in the United States Senate to end debate on a potential bill on the floor of the Senate in the Senate you need 60 votes. Now, remember there's 100 senators. It is more than just a majority. You need to have a supermajority. If you can't get 60 votes to end debate, it's known as a closure vote. Those in the minority, those who want to slow things down, can engage in what's known as a filibuster. A filibuster is basically you get on the floor of the Senate. When you are recognized to speak, you continue to speak and speak.
N. Rodgers: What's he doing now? He's reading the rules of some card game. I can't remember well. I was out what it was the rule.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was poker.
N. Rodgers: Then he's going to move on to a cookbook as long as he's talking.
J. Aughenbaugh: They cannot take a vote to end debate. In Neo, why does Stackhouse not want a vote on this bill? Do you remember why?
N. Rodgers: Well, I know that he doesn't want them to make the print deadline.
J. Aughenbaugh: He wanted money added for what research?
N. Rodgers: For autism research.
J. Aughenbaugh: For autism research because he has a.
N. Rodgers: Autistic grandchild?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Donna figures it out. Because Donna's smart she looks at the pictures and she's like, wait, there's one grandchild that doesn't get mentioned.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: In the press releases. That's because that's a child they're protecting because she wants special needs. Towards the end of the episode, they decided that they were going to help him by calling senators to see if someone will go give him, sorry, I get emotional if somebody will go give him a break by asking him a question.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Sorry. One of the senators goes in and says, I'd like to ask you about autism. Then he says, my question comes in 24 parts you'd like to sit down and have a drink of water?
J. Aughenbaugh: They give him an out. But also by sending him a message, the White House now understands.
N. Rodgers: They're going to pull the bell and now they're negotiating.
J. Aughenbaugh: The worry negotiate.
N. Rodgers: Sorry, I get emotional because when you see that they see they've made a mistake.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They want to fix it.
J. Aughenbaugh: They don't want to embarrass him. They don't want to get in his face. They want to go ahead and say, Senator, we understand, we screwed up. We're not going to make a big deal about this.
N. Rodgers: During this episode, Bartlett has eaten dinner with Leo and he has crammed caramel at the end that has a lot of sugar in it, according to Leo, because at one point he says to CJ, we're grandfathers, we came before and there'll be here after and don't mess with the grandchildren. She's like, okay. When she starts to call around for help.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He starts with the grandfathers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, she starts with the grandfathers. The narrative, if you will, hawk, throughout that entire episode, is CJ's writing a letter to her dad.
N. Rodgers: That's right because it's his birthday.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's his birthday. As we find out later in the show, CJ's dad is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's, which is even more difficult for her father because her father was, I believe, a math teacher. It's one of the connective, if you will, tissues throughout the entire episode is in politics. The personal is real.
N. Rodgers: The personal is real it's really important.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's very real, it's very important. By the way, that's our segue to my first favorite episode. My first favorite episode is entitled Mr. Willis from Ohio. It's from Season 1, Episode 6. The episode starts with Toby and Mandy played by, I believe Moore Kelly.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're trying to convince members of Congress to approve an appropriations bill for the Commerce Department that would have a provision allowing for the census count to be based in part on statistical sampling. One of the members of Congress they're trying to convince of this is Mr. Willis from Ohio. Mr. Willis was recently appointed to fill the seat of his recently deceased wife who had held that congressional district seat. Again, Mr. Willis is somebody who doesn't really know all that much about how Congress and the White House does things. He's a high school history teacher but he doesn't know how Washington DC insiders do things. This is a connection to, for instance, your two favorite episodes, Nia because once again, he's being so naive forces not only members of Congress, but members of his own political party, and the White House, to explain things to him.
N. Rodgers: Because he doesn't want to just vote because they tell him to vote.
J. Aughenbaugh: Vote a certain way.
N. Rodgers: A certain way. He wants to understand why? Part of that is he's honoring his wife and her legacy. Out of that is, he's honoring his district and he really believes that he should know why he's voting the way he's voting.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which is a good thing. It reminds you that people should not just pop into their head into your office and say vote yes and the next bill that's coming up and then wander away without telling you why.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's got to be more than just because the party says so. It's got to be more than just the White House wants this. He wants to understand. But the other reason why I love this episode and Nia, you, and I have explored this throughout this podcast. It really illustrates the difficulty we have in 21st-century America in trying to comply with the language of the Constitution that was written in 1787. The census requirement we've done previous podcast episodes about, is in some ways extremely simple. We count every American, every 10 years. Then we announced the results. But that becomes extremely difficult in a nation that is geographically spread out like the United States and now has over 330 million of us.
N. Rodgers: We have more than 330.
J. Aughenbaugh: There are some just great dialogue in this episode. My favorite is the hilarious exchange between CJ and Sam about what the Constitution requires in regards to the census, and then how she can explain it in her role as the press secretary. She says, pretend like I know nothing about the census, and Sam goes, so what do you know about the census? She goes, Sam, I just told you. Pretend like I don't know anything and just response was, you're a little late to the party, though we got some learning to do. But it's a hilarious in exchange because you're talking about two really smart people. But CJ is not necessarily a constitutional law expert, and Sam who went to law school he is like, what do you mean you don't know anything about this? But again, that's part of the difficulty when we get into these silos of knowledge.
N. Rodgers: She needs words that mean something to regular people.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right because that's the stuff that's going to be reported by the press.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: That the regular folks are going to read in newspapers.
N. Rodgers: People in the press who don't know the nuances. To pick them up from her. That's why words matter and that's why that job is so hard because you have to not condescend to people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But speak plainly enough that people understand what you mean. That's a fine line to walk. Anybody who's ever taught a class, Aggy is accused of this all the time of condescension when that's not what he means. He's just trying to speak as plainly and as clearly as possible in order for students to not have any question about how he's trying to answer the question.
J. Aughenbaugh: There was a really good part later on in the episode where Sam is explaining both sides of how to do the sensors. The one approach which is we can only report those who we've actually counted, versus why we might use statistical sampling. Which is there are a whole bunch of Americans who end up not getting counted for a lot of different reasons. Initially, CJ favors the first approach, but then Sam goes, but there are trade-offs, and the downside is without statistical sampling, there are whole bunch of Americans who will never get counted in the course. CJ then goes over to the other side, which is what a lot of us do when we are exposed to.
N. Rodgers: Complex questions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Complex questions. I love that episode. By the way, the Bartlett administration does win the vote, and it's really cool. At the end of the episode, they're all sitting around starting to play poker. But Toby won't participate even though they think they're going to win the vote in Congress because he wants to hear how Mr. Willis actually vote. Thus the name of the episode. Because when the clerk in the house is doing the vote, they will go ahead and say, Ms. Rodgers from North Carolina, Mr. Roginbaugh from Pennsylvania, Mr. Willis from Ohio. Again, just showing Americans how votes take place, because most Americans don't tune into the C-SPAN, or go to either house chambers for votes. I mean, we just don't have time for that.
N. Rodgers: No. Can I just say there's a secondary story in that episode where they all go to a bar after work. Do like Charlie and the president's youngest daughter-
J. Aughenbaugh: Start a relationship.
N. Rodgers: -are starting to date at that point. They all go to a bar and she goes up to the bar to get the next round of drinks for the table and some guy hits on her, and then Charlie steps in and it's going to be a fight.
J. Aughenbaugh: It escalates.
N. Rodgers: Then Josh says, oh, your day is about to get really bad to the other guy who has been saying [inaudible] Charlie and hitting on Zoe. Then all of a sudden the door flies open and six secret service agents come in and drag him and his friends out. You reminded that Zoe as a young woman because she's the daughter of the president, because she's living at home or actually, I think at that point she might be living in Georgetown, she might actually be a university already. But she's secret service detail.
J. Aughenbaugh: She has secret service protection. What's great about that so plot is that President Bartlett is concern that Charlie is working too hard because the backstory to Charlie's character is Charlie's mom was a DC police officer who was killed in the line of duty. Charlie ends up taking care of his younger sister. Well, also working at the White House and the president is concerned that Charlie is working too hard. Bartlett, the president has Josh and Sam take Charlie out for drinks, and it's just going to be the guys. But then Zoe finds out, and Leo's daughter who's got a crush on Sam, and CJ they also want to go out. The six of them go out, and at one point as you described it, Zoe goes to the bar to order another round of drinks, which by the way, she should not be able to because she's not venge but nevertheless, she's at the plot. Secret service comes in and then afterwards, they go back to the West way, and the women think that Josh and Sam were going to get into trouble and they don't. But Charlie was just like, what do you guys talking about? You guys would have been able to go ahead and break up that fight. You guys are college educated, law school educated. You haven't been in a fight like all your lives. I on the other hand had grown up on the mean streets of DC. But it's an hilarious subplot. That's the thing about the first couple of years or the West Wing.
N. Rodgers: There's always a subplot. There's always the main thing, some lower-level thing, and sometimes it comes back into being another episode and sometimes it just doesn't, like that relationship is established but there are other episodes where the subplot is just a one-episode thing and it drifts away and they never. In the first episode we see Sam as he wakes up he is waking up in bed with a woman who.
J. Aughenbaugh: A high-priced [inaudible] .
N. Rodgers: Turns out to be a call girl. She switches pagers with him accidentally, and then it's a whole subplot that becomes longer thing. But you have another episode that you want. No, we'd like all means let's be honest.
J. Aughenbaugh: But another one of my favorite episodes, folks, I'm just going to go in and I apologize. This episode is a policy geeks heaven, because it is, meaty weighty. There's a lot of meat on this bone. The episode is mandatory minimums, and it also comes from Season 1, it's Episode 20, and the episode is about two policy issues that continue to be devil plagued the United States in the last 30 years. One, how to regulate soft money contributions for federal elections, and then two, mandatory minimum drug sentences for violating federal drug laws. I'm going to focus on the soft money first. This episode occurred before the Supreme Court's ruling in one of nears least favorite Supreme Court rulings of probably the last 15-20 years.
N. Rodgers: You're going to say I'm going to make the sound.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission, 2010. This is the rolling where the Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote held that the federal government could not regulate soft money campaign contributions made by corporations, trade unions, professional associations, etc.
N. Rodgers: Because their argument is that money is speech.
J. Aughenbaugh: Money is speech. This was not a new issue when the Supreme Court tackled it in 2010.
N. Rodgers: Clearly not if it was brought up in 1999.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. This was a significant issue throughout the 1990s. If you will, the focus of the debate was at the Federal Election Commission. The Federal Election Commission is an independent regulatory commission, meaning that its members, there's five commissioners and no single president can nominate a majority of the members. Right?
N. Rodgers: Right, and they're not supposed to be influenced politically, aren't they?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. They're supposed to be independent regulatory commission. Bartlett has an opportunity to appoint two members to the five member commission. He thinks that one of the remaining three can be flipped so that the FEC actually regulates soft money contributions. There's a great scene in this episode where one of the three remaining members is brought to the West Wing to be influenced. He comes in to the Oval office and he's obviously overwhelmed. He's never been near to the Oval office before, and he asks for a drink of water. While he's waiting for the drink of water, Leo then invites him into the chief of staff's office and standing outside the chief of staff's office, was a uniformed marine corps member. They guy now he's parched. Is he adds or clade made from the marine corps with a rifle. Then Leo gives him the heart cell, you are one of us. We know you are because when you were much younger, you wrote about how you were not entirely convinced that soft money contributions should be protected by the First Amendment. But I loved that entire, if you will, discussion because the episode goes into, since the late 1960s to early 1970s, corporations, trade unions, labor unions, professional associations, all have created political action committees to raise a whole bunch of money, and then they spend it on elections, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's largely unregulated, but both sides do it. That's like one of the arguments that was being discussed in the Bartlett administration. If we do this, don't we hurt our party along with hurting the opposition party. There's that. The other policy issue discussed, the aforementioned named as the episode is mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimum drug sentences. Drug sentences arose in the 1980s as an issue during the Reagan administration's war on drugs. Republicans wanted stiff drug sentences to reduce both the supply and demand for narcotics in the United States. It was a bipartisan issue because democrats also wanted greater equality of drug sentences across the federal courts. It was one of those rare moments where you saw bipartisan agreement that drug sentences needed to become equal and at a high level. Because for Democrats, it should not matter where you got arrested and convicted in what federal court. For Republicans, they wanted to take discretion at the hands of federal judges because they were tired of seeing federal judges give really small sentences to drug kingpins, so you get disagreement. By the way, public opinion polls were uniformly in support. It wasn't just white suburban voters, you're talking about, urban voters of color who wanted this.
N. Rodgers: Because their neighborhoods were being destroyed by drugs.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, just by destroyed by drugs. It had rural and urban support, white and voters of color. The compromise was that the United States Sentencing Commission, which was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1989, would raise mandatory minimums for drug crimes. The problem that quickly arose though Leo was one.
N. Rodgers: Is this where crack cocaine gets more prison time than powder cocaine?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Thus splits out along racial lines and among urban versus suburban lines because crack cocaine was what persons of color in inner cities did, and powder cocaine was what white kids from the burbs did.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: They were getting lower sentences and then you start to see these huge disparities.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, huge disparities. One of the reasons why I liked the West Wing normally, but particularly with this episode Nia, was the balanced manner in which they explained how difficult it was to get agreement on intractable public policy problems. Right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Many of the solutions that are attempted to address those problems cause unintended consequences. In regards to mandatory minimums, you're talking about racism within the federal criminal justice system, and in regards to soft money contributions, does it or does it not violate the First Amendment freedom of speech?
N. Rodgers: The thing is, without soft money, you don't get Barack Obama's five-dollar contribution. When he ran, that's where he got a lot of the money, well millions of small donors as opposed to where some people run and they get one or two really big donors.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Why do you say one is better than the other?
J. Aughenbaugh: Barack Obama really benefited from soft money because many political action committees could go ahead and run ads criticizing his primary opponent, which was then Senator Hillary Clinton. Then in the general election, criticize his opponent, John McCain. The ads were not coordinated with Barack Obama's campaign. Though Barack Obama benefited from soft money in a way that we probably had not seen before. Again, you can hate soft money contributions, but understand that it usually ends up benefiting candidates of both political parties, which is why now both political parties don't want to get rid of soft money contributions.
N. Rodgers: We're talking about the federal level, so that the state and local level that soft money is how people who don't have their own personal fortune become city counselors or mayors, governors. That's how they do that at the state and local level is because almost nobody who's running at for state and local level, is a gazillionaire. They don't have a huge amount of money and they don't have enough of a national profile to attract large donations from generous donors.
J. Aughenbaugh: One of the reasons why I would hope that listeners do watch this episode is that it actually punctuates one of the false narratives about mandatory minimums. That it was only a Republican Party idea. In the 1880s voters of all races, urban versus rural both the Republicans and the Democrats wanted mandatory minimums. Why? They wanted him for different reasons. But you add bipartisan agreement that we had to take discretion out of the hands of federal judges and establish what were the mandatory minimums. For different reasons. The Republicans wanted to go ahead and eliminate the supply and demand. If we're democrats, they wanted greater equality among the sentencing.
N. Rodgers: There's problems with mandatory minimums because they don't have to take into account the nuances of individual cases. This is not a solution to that necessarily, but it is a good reminder from the West Wing of how often either side could get on board if they would just talk about how to get on board, put something together. Before we end this episode and I know we're running close to time, but I want to mention, can I do have a one special mention? One of the things that West Wing did as a show was it tackled things that were hard or complicated or nuanced. On almost all of those issues you get more than one viewpoint. I know that people thought of it as a Democrat show. I'm not sure that that's accurate. There were a lot of things and there were a lot of characters that brought in different points of view. But I do want to mention it's one of the few shows that I know that directly responded to 9/11.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: The episode Isaac and Ishmael, which is a lockdown of the White House. Group of presidential scholars are locked down when they visit the White House. The Whitehouse goes into lockdown because there's a threat and they end up in the cafeteria. There is a long discussion about terrorism and what terrorism means and what is it. A lot of shows they didn't want to bring it up. They didn't want to mention it. They wanted to just go on as if it had not happened. Because it's a hard thing to talk about. West Wing and Aaron Zircon specifically said, no, we're going to talk about it because it's a life altering event.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and again, even if you're listeners, if your own political leanings are to the right or you're affiliated with the Republican Party, they did episodes about the Second Amendment.
N. Rodgers: Well, Ainsley Hayes is a great character.
J. Aughenbaugh: Character and there was an episode when she first appears on the show. She comes to the attention of the Bartlett administration because she goes on a Sunday morning new show butt kicked.
N. Rodgers: Thank you. That's not what they say in the show, but Sam's getting his butt kicked by a girl as she walks his dog. She has an answer for everything.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the Bartlett administration was just like, hey, we should hire her because one she's smart and two, she would keep us honest. She gets on to the show they're having a discussion about the Second Amendment and she said something that always resonated with me, which was, we can have a disagreement about the meaning of the Second Amendment but for many people who own guns, the reason why they don't like the Bartlett administration's stance on the Second Amendment is, you don't like the people who liked guns, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: That always resonated with me because that was not something that you saw at that time in mainstream media, which is, just because somebody likes to own guns doesn't make them a bad person. You saw that in a number of episodes where you are just like, that's a good point. Just because they think differently than you doesn't necessarily make them a bad person. It may reflect, there was an entire episode about reparations for African Americans who are descendants of slaves. They did a great job with it in terms of explaining why there are folks who want reparations for descendants of slaves, and why it might be difficult to achieve in terms of public policy,. Again, those are the response to the 9/11 attacks. They have easily two or three episodes about picking people to serve on the Supreme Court.
N. Rodgers: They I have a great episode about trade.
J. Aughenbaugh: I almost pick those episodes.
N. Rodgers: They have a great episode about trade where Donna starts off by saying to Josh Mexico called, which is funny.
J. Aughenbaugh: Tax breaks. There was one episode where Josh goes ahead and is trying to explain changes to the tax code and Donna says, I want my money back and Josh goes, but we don't trust how you will spend your money, but that's one of the criticisms of the federal government's tax code, which is you're taking money out of Americans pockets and one of the ways that can be interpreted is the government doesn't trust what you would do with that money.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Government believes that it knows better than you.
J. Aughenbaugh: You do, right?
N. Rodgers: Right. I think our overall recommendation is watch all of it. Some of it has not aged as well. It was not weird, delighted we clearly love West Wing. Some of this has not aged as well as others.
J. Aughenbaugh: Some episodes that have a soap opera esque quality to it.
N. Rodgers: You just have to roll that off.
J. Aughenbaugh: But particularly the first two seasons, good lord.
N. Rodgers: They're excellent.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Highly recommend it.
N. Rodgers: Thanks Aughie. That's our first favorite episode and there will be more to come.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes and we hope you enjoyed it and if you have recommendations for other kinds of favorite episodes, feel free to email us.
N. Rodgers: Also feel free to email us about next summer stain because we haven't picked one yet. If you have something you think you'd like to hear more about.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Wonderful.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good bye.
N. Rodgers: Thank you.
You've been listening to civil discourse brought to you by VCU Libraries. Opinions expressed are solely the speaker's own and do not reflect the views or opinions of VCU or VCU Libraries. Special thanks to the Workshop for technical assistance. Music by Isaak Hopson. Find more information at guides.library.vcu.edu/discourse. As always, no documents were harmed in the making of this podcast.