Chapter Text
President BARTLETT is standing on the patio outside the Oval Office, in the late evening dark, smoking a cigarette. TOBY gingerly opens a door and comes out to join him. They stand side-by-side, looking out at the grounds of the White House and the night sky together.
TOBY (with slight hesitation): Good evening, Mister President. Debbie told me you wanted to ask me… to ask me about David.
Toby looks ready, simultaneously to cover painful personal ground and to serve as Father Confessor for Bartlett – looking for absolution and solace as these astronauts prepare to join Toby’s brother, their own former colleague, in death.
BARTLETT: I heard about your conversation with CJ. So I guess you now understand the impossible quandary I’ve found myself in.
Toby makes the slightest motion of the head – our only indication of his surprise.
TOBY: Broadly sir, yes.
Bartlett takes a puff of cigarette.
BARTLETT: David would have insisted on protecting national secrets no matter the cost?
TOBY (without hesitation or doubt): Yes sir.
Bartlett nods.
BARTLETT: You and he often didn’t see eye to eye, did you?
TOBY (with a tint of remorse): No sir.
Bartlett takes another puff before looking off into the distance. In the following lines, he emphasizes certain words, but only very lightly.
BARTLETT: Death becomes the ultimate constraint to dialogue. ( beat ) Before he left office, President Lassiter saddled me with a great many things that I didn’t want — that I didn’t agree with — but which I remain powerless to have an open dialogue about.
Beat.
TOBY: Yes sir.
(Imagine the nuance of intonation and tone that Richard Schiff would bring to each of these lines of “Yes sir” and “No sir”)
BARTLETT: If David were here right now, do you think dialogue would have changed his views on things?
Toby hesitates ever so slightly in a moment of vulnerability.
TOBY: …I don’t know sir.
Bartlett nods .
BARTLETT: Do you believe in peace, Toby?
TOBY: I believe in a just peace, sir.
BARTLETT: That’s what I thought I believed too. And now what is my legacy going to be? American foreign intervention in three sovereign nations overseas. The assassination of Abdul Sharif. A peace treaty in the Holy Land that’s held together by a thread on the backs of American kids in uniform.
Puff .
BARTLETT: Some man of peace I turned out to be.
There is a beat. Neither man looks at each other, but we see something flicker across each of their faces - Bartlett perhaps expecting Toby to offer something, Toby withholding
BARTLETT: I was a pacifist when I was younger, you know.
TOBY: I didn’t, sir. So was I.
BARTLETT: What changed your mind?
TOBY: Who says I have?
Bartlett nods, solemn
BARTLETT: Even beyond pacifism, there surely are gradations of moral warfare. America already plunged the world into the nightmare of the nuclear era. And now we stand ready to jump into another nightmare, where no realm is untouched by the scourge of violence.
Short beat
BARTLETT: And for all my power, I remain powerless to halt that leap.
Long beat. Bartlett looks up into the sky
BARTLETT: Toby… I need to ask something of you. Something greater and more portentious than anything before.
BARTLETT: When I asked Leo and then CJ to sacrifice their personal lives in the service of their country, I asked them to do something for me. And now I will ask you to do the same, in the service of something even greater than our country.
BARTLETT: I need you to jump off a cliff for me.
Toby turns his head to look directly at the President, who continues to stare off into the sky.
BARTLETT: I may be able to catch you at the bottom, but I may not. I’m sure you understand the havoc that can be wrought upon this office by my actions. If we do this, we must understand that cost to be greater than any personal cost.
The President now turns his head to meet Toby’s eyes solemnly.
BARTLETT: If you do this, I will need to denounce you and renounce you, again and again and again.
Toby makes the smallest half smile or smirk as he sees the perfect rhetorical opening.
TOBY: Three times before the rooster crows, Mister President?
Bartlett cannot help but smile and almost chuckle at Toby’s New Testament reference – touched by Toby’s invocation of Bartlett’s own faith, but of course mediated through the trademark Toby acerbicness, as Toby rhetorically casts Bartlett as Simon Peter, and himself as no less than Jesus Christ, sacrificial Lamb of God.
A beat as they both settle back into solemnity and Bartlett looks away again.
BARTLETT: There will be a great many people who scorn you, Toby… but your friends will always hold you in the highest esteem.
Beat.
TOBY: Sir… you have to know that you would also be jumping off this cliff with me. The Republicans will probably have both houses of Congress this fall, and they’ve learned how potent political witchhunts can be.
TOBY: (his voice rising) Gibson would enjoy nothing more than subpoenaing a former Democratic president to appear before Congress. And Arnie Vinick won’t hold him back, especially not in the face of (his voice peaks before trailing off )… the appearance of impropriety. (he finishes with a mild tone of dejection )
BARTLETT: I know, Toby.
Bartlett turns his whole body to face Toby.
BARLETT: For this to work, immense moral certainty and fortitude will be required. And I can’t think of anyone I trust more with that than you.
Toby turns his whole body to face Bartlett and looks him in the eye. An entire conversation without words passes between them.
TOBY: I serve at the pleasure of the President.
Bartlett reaches out and clasps Toby’s arm. Toby returns the gesture, and they hold each other’s arms for a beat. Then they separate, and Bartlett gives Toby a small nod of dismissal.
TOBY (his voice thick): Thank you, Mister President.
And he leaves to return inside, to cement what will all-but-certainly be his longest-lasting legacy.
Bartlett watches him go, before turning his gaze back out to the grounds.
He looks up, to the astronauts, before bowing his head in prayer.