February 20, 2014--"365"
I believe I've reported here that I am addicted to the TV series West Wing.
Too busy to watch it from 1999 to 2006, the seven years it was on, thanks to the miracle of streaming and blessed now with time, about two months ago we began watching the first of the 154 episodes of, thinking that if it didn't grab us, we'd move on to House of Cards or some such.
We'll, just yesterday morning we watched episode 124, "356," which begins with President Jeb Bartlet delivering his last State of the Union address.
Other WW addicts will know that in this episode, former Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, returns to the White House after heart bypass survey to help restore order to the chaos his leaving caused. In addition, many of the senior staff have left to work on various presidential campaigns since Bartlet cannot run again and as a result things in the White House are not going well.
Bartlet's Multiple Sclerosis has worsened; and for the final year of his term, he and the staff are just running out the clock. Forgotten are all the big issues they took on earlier. A sense of malaise and finality has settled over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
We see Leo watching videos of President Bartlet's previous seven States of the Union, which had me thinking Leo was longing for the good-old-days when he and Bartlet were healthy and, as a team joined at the hip, the two most powerful people in the world. I suspected that after watching the videos and becoming fully depressed, Leo would head home and never return to work.
But instead, he has dinner in the Residence with the president and during it takes the opportunity to read his old friend the riot act--reminding him that there are 365 days remaining in his presidency and rather than phoning it in and then calling it a day, he should stop feeling sorry for himself, assemble the staff, and tell them it is time for new ideas and that, at the minimum, they should go out fighting for the things they came to Washington to do.
By the end of the episode, Leo is seen refurnishing his office and the staff are again fired up and ready for one last big-time go-round.
This made me think that with 1063 days remaining in Obama's presidency (more days than John F. Kennedy served), he should call his staff into the Oval Office, show them "365," and remind them about what inspired him to run for the presidency and attracted them to work for him.
As Leo put it, "Let's leave it all out on the field."
Too busy to watch it from 1999 to 2006, the seven years it was on, thanks to the miracle of streaming and blessed now with time, about two months ago we began watching the first of the 154 episodes of, thinking that if it didn't grab us, we'd move on to House of Cards or some such.
We'll, just yesterday morning we watched episode 124, "356," which begins with President Jeb Bartlet delivering his last State of the Union address.
Other WW addicts will know that in this episode, former Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, returns to the White House after heart bypass survey to help restore order to the chaos his leaving caused. In addition, many of the senior staff have left to work on various presidential campaigns since Bartlet cannot run again and as a result things in the White House are not going well.
Bartlet's Multiple Sclerosis has worsened; and for the final year of his term, he and the staff are just running out the clock. Forgotten are all the big issues they took on earlier. A sense of malaise and finality has settled over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
We see Leo watching videos of President Bartlet's previous seven States of the Union, which had me thinking Leo was longing for the good-old-days when he and Bartlet were healthy and, as a team joined at the hip, the two most powerful people in the world. I suspected that after watching the videos and becoming fully depressed, Leo would head home and never return to work.
But instead, he has dinner in the Residence with the president and during it takes the opportunity to read his old friend the riot act--reminding him that there are 365 days remaining in his presidency and rather than phoning it in and then calling it a day, he should stop feeling sorry for himself, assemble the staff, and tell them it is time for new ideas and that, at the minimum, they should go out fighting for the things they came to Washington to do.
By the end of the episode, Leo is seen refurnishing his office and the staff are again fired up and ready for one last big-time go-round.
This made me think that with 1063 days remaining in Obama's presidency (more days than John F. Kennedy served), he should call his staff into the Oval Office, show them "365," and remind them about what inspired him to run for the presidency and attracted them to work for him.
As Leo put it, "Let's leave it all out on the field."
Labels: "West Wing", Barack Obama, President Jeb Bartlet, The Presidency, Video Streaming
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:04 AM
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