Season 2, Episode 14: A left-leaning senator from North Dakota spars with White House communications director Toby Ziegler over the president’s will-ingness to reform Social Security with Republican input, saying, “If your commission recommends raising the retirement age one day, reducing benefits one dollar [or] partial privatization of Social Security, I will condemn it [as] the act of a group intent on destroying Social Security.” The senator’s alternatives — to divert more money into Social Security or run a third-party campaign against President Jed Bartlet — are met with vitriol. “Come at us from the left, I’m gonna own your ass,” Ziegler assures him.

Season 2, Episode 16: In this episode, Ziegler unwillingly meets with World Trade Organization protesters, twice insinuating to others that he would rather kill them than speak with them. Once there, annoyed by the disorganization of the meeting, he reads the newspaper rather than speaking with anyone. Later, observing a street demonstration against free trade, he snarks, “It’s activist vacation is what it is — spring break for anarchist wannabes: the black T-shirts, the gas masks as fashion accessories.”

Season 3, Episode 8: White House press secretary C. J. Cregg is infuriated by President Bartlet’s decision to sell arms to the Middle East-ern country Qumar — an amalgam of the Gulf petrostate monarchies — which Cregg accuses emphatically of “beating the women.” Qumar also gets compared to the Third Reich and Rhodesia: “Apartheid was an East Hampton clambake com-pared to what we laughingly refer to as the life these women lead,” Cregg insists. Her alternative? “How about instead of . . . sell[ing] the guns to them . . . we shoot the guns at them?”

Season 5, Episode 17: Reluctant to nominate a moderate to occupy a vacant seat on the Supreme Court, Bartlet and his staff hatch a crackpot plan to nominate a Ruth Bader Ginsburg liberal to the bench — possible only if they also nominate an archconservative described as “the man [who] wrote a book that flushes the entire doctrine of unenumerated rights down . . . the garbage disposal! No right to use a condom. No right to get an abortion, certainly. No protection from electronic searches. No substantive due process.” Why the compromise? “The two of them together fighting like cats and dogs. . . .  It works.”

Season 5, Episode 21: The staff of the West Wing are confident that a bombing in Gaza that claims the lives of several members of an American delegation is the responsibility of the chairman of the Palestinian Authority. President Bartlet’s chief of staff wants to carpet-bomb Palestine in response, saying in the next episode, “This isn’t the UN. He’s not the secretary-general. He’s president of the United States, and our job is to make sure his priorities are clear. Today’s priority is not world peace.” But by season six, everything is fine: the United States bombs the camp belonging to the faction responsible for the attack on the delegation, then negotiates peace between Israel and Palestine during a single fun-filled weekend at Camp David.

Season 6, Episode 19: Bartlet’s administration is conducting secret talks with a dying Fidel Castro — the only real-world political leader mentioned by name in the show — in hopes of ending the ongoing embargo. But when anti-Castro Cuban émigrés in Florida find out, Bartlet and his staff decide that their votes in the upcoming midterms are more important than actually doing anything. Instead, Bartlet gives a shitlib version of the “I Have a Dream” speech, which begins as follows: “My dream is that . . . the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who [have] come to America in search of a better life and freedom will finally have the chance to find that freedom in their own country.”