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?”