8.3/10. Every now and again, *The West Wing* turns into a disaster movie. There’s nothing wrong with it exactly, but the show stumbles into some uber-crisis with tense music and a sense that, if only for one episode, the show is becoming more of a blockbuster than it is a heady, policy-wonky show for nerds like yours truly. But one of the ways that the show backs away from this a little is by focusing less on the crisis itself, and more on how the people in charge are struggling to handle it. I’ve made no secret of the fact that Bartlet’s *Father Knows Best* routine can wear on me, but I like the idea, however implausible, that the President refuses to push off responsibility of a malfunctioning nuclear plant to a Czar or the Head of the Nuclear Regulatory Council, instead seeing it as a burden so important that he must take it on himself. That means making the hard calls. Bartlet has to decide whether to vent gas when evacuation is not complete, with the possibility of explosion on the one hand and the risk of the elderly and disabled “bearing the brunt” of the release on the other. (If only he’d had Homer Simpson’s drinking bird to help him.) He has to decide whether to announce that the amount of nuclear material in the air is a little bit above the EPA-specified safe amount, risking a panic on the one hand and the moral difficulty of hiding a danger from the public on the other. He has to decide whether to send civilian mechanical engineers into the plant, risking their lives in the process. He has to decide whether to keep them in there longer, exposing them to more possibly dangerous radiation, but also possibly ending the crisis once and for all and keeping the whole of Southern California safe. And when that doesn’t work, and one of them slips into a coma, he has to decide whether to send in another team. He makes the tough calls, and eventually manages to stop the problem, but at the cost of one of those engineer’s lives, a death he puts at the feet of Senator Vinick, who lobbied for that plant to be in his home state and who has been, and still is, a staunch pro-nuclear energy advocate. And this is where, as has happened many times as I’ve watched *The West Wing*, my personal politics put me on the outs with the series a bit. Though the show attempts to give Vinick’s position a fair hearing, it’s clear that the folks behind the scenes are against nuclear energy, if only for giving the last word to ol’ wise papa Bartlet declaring that they’ll never be safe, and having his argument with Vinick interrupted by the news of a young man’s death to drive the point home. I don’t want to litigate the arguments on both sides here, but it’s a reminder of the risks of any show about politics. When you make it about a political issue, and portray one side as heroic, or even just right, it can make parts of your narrative, even big parts, feel tin-eared to swaths of your audience. (See also: *Dallas Buyers Club* where the protagonist rails against a now well-known life-saving medication.) If nothing else, the Jed Bartlet we’ve seen for seven years would almost certainly take that kind of position on nuclear power, and I’m sure he’s not especially endeared to arguments about its safety having had to make all of those tough calls. He is, however, not the only person having to make tough calls here. Apart from the actual mechanics of the crisis, both the Santos campaign and the Vinick campaign are embroiled in a game of chicken over how to deal with the political consequences of this event. The importance of this political calculation is magnified by two notable developments: the information that Vinick lobbied to get that power plant, and President Bartlet following procedure by inviting Vinick to come on Air Force One and visit his home state with the President. These two things create a crisis for the Santos campaign. Josh’s initial instinct is to go dark. He knows that as soon as Santos makes any kind of statement about Vinick’s support for nuclear power, he’ll be open to accusations that they’re playing politics, and that if they leak the info about Vinick’s lobbying, it’ll be seen as an almost craven use of the tragedy for political purposes. On the other hand, the President inviting Vinick, however standard it may be, complicates matters, because it allows Vinick to be seen as a healer, as presidential, as bipartisan, and most of all would let him wriggle out of the situation that gives Santos the best chance to tar him with this disaster. On the other side of the fence, Bruno is being just as calculating. Campaign advisor Bob is worried about the pro-nuclear clips from Vinick’s debate performance being repeated endlessly on the news networks and wants Vinick to put out a statement. Bruno, like Josh, advises calm and reserve, a chance to wait and see. He wants to bait Josh. He knows his old ally, and he knows that as soon as Josh smells blood in the water, he won’t be able to help himself from taking advantage of the situation. Then, Vinick’s camp can deflect, can turn around and accuse Santos of making this humanitarian issue a political one, and win the news cycle. Vinick, however, can’t help himself. It’s oddly noble from him. Even if he’s on what the show would consider the wrong side of the issue, Vinick is still one of *The West Wing*’s champions, and that means when offered a choice between doing what’s politically expedient and what he truly believes in, he’s going to pick the latter. Vinick believes that nuclear power is safe. He believes that inadequate federal regulations are to blame. And however helpful to his campaign it would be for him to just hang back and bask in the halo effect of standing with the President and letting his mea culpa cover your own, he just can’t do it. He has to stand by his beliefs, even if they’re beliefs the show will have its mouthpiece of truth and righteousness excoriate him for later. What’s so incredible about that moment, when Vinick goes off script and speaks his mind, is that Bruno was right! Josh had given in and told Donna to leak the story, but because Josh had been able to forebear just long enough for the press to get a hold of it on their own, the story gets out and Santos’s campaign doesn’t get tainted by seeming to be mercenary about something like this. This was a stand off, a game of strategy. Vinick flinched, because he, like so many *West Wing* characters, couldn’t let the moment get ahead of his principles, and Josh (and by extension Santos) held out just long enough for the map to suddenly be looking much more in their favor. The decisions made at a Presidential level, whether they come from hopefuls or the man occupying the Oval Office, are hard ones. You have to deal with the tough calls of weighing the lives of the many versus those of the few, and have blood on your hands even when you’ve arguably done the right thing. You have to decide whether politicizing something is what’s best in a utilitarian calculation or whether to stand firm on your beliefs regardless of how that may hurt you. You have to balance all of this while Russia and China are about to go to war over oil and elections in Eastern Europe. You have to have your lonely, beleaguered Communications Director wrangle the press and his own subordinates in order to avoid panicking the population. There’s no right answer to most of these questions. Does Vinick look at that map and wish he’d kept quiet? Does Bartlet hear the news about the dead engineer and wish he’d pulled the first team earlier? Does Josh thank his lucky stars that one enterprising reporter got to the story before he had a chance to have Donna leak it? Probably. There’s so much uncertainty, so much at stake in these decisions, that as much as an episode like this feels like a disaster movie with dramatic events taking place every five minutes, what makes them meaningful are the people navigating these decisions, trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing, and hoping for the best, sometimes even to their ruin.