History WMG / TheWestWing

[[WMG: [[{{BrotherChuck}} Mandy]] willingly quit her job at the White House to...]]

** Agreed. Saving a group of astronauts' lives at the price of revealing the existence of a top secret shuttle is exactly the kind of thing Bartlet would do if it were just him making the decision. But since he's the President, that's not the kind of choice he can make. And the fact that someone on his senior staff, someone he's known and trusted for years, deliberately went behind his back and took that choice away from him probably ranks as the most damning sort of betrayal. But even then, he doesn't fire Toby because of personal reasons; indeed, when he passes down his judgment, he's much calmer than in the rest of the conversation, telling Toby, "I can't accept your resignation for this, Toby. I have to fire you." It shows that he's not firing Toby because of his betrayal of Bartlet personally, but because the magnitude of his security breech was so great that the public wouldn't accept anything less as a punishment. Letting Toby resign would show tact approval for his actions in the public eye, which would be political suicide. And even the decision to write a pardon came at (almost literally) the last minute.

[[WMG: Josiah Bartlet is Dolores Landingham's [[StarWars padawan]]]]

Josh is the political savant of the cast and Leo knows he would recognize a great candidate when everyone else might be looking in a different direction - and he knows Josh is the one most likely to run a successful campaign. Furthermore, he knows that being CoS is Josh's main career goal and he wants his surrogate son to be able to do so for a "fresh", new president with at least four years ahead of him. Appointing him Bartlet's CoS would have locked him in, but by finding his own candidate and running his campaign he would be able to take the CoS job from the very starting point of a new administration. Essentially, Leo wanted Josh to be able to do what Leo himself had done with Bartlet - and it worked.

* This is a theory that even Coulson's own actor Creator/ClarkGregg supports.

Quasi-{{canon}}ical because the show features skewed election cycles to the ones in the real world, but over the years many fans have suggested various jumping off points for when the timeline skew happened. A popular one is that Nixon was impeached and a special election was held, restarting the 4-year Presidential cycle at 1974. Perhaps, since Ford didn't pardon Nixon, he wins the 1976 election instead of losing narrowly as in our universe. By the time Ronald Reagan gets a chance to be elected, he's considered far too old or showing clear signs of Alzheimner's. There's never a "Reagan Revolution," and the whole US political climate is less viciously partisan. This explains why everyone seems much more polite and reasonable on TheWestWing, and why a Democratic White House could hire two Republican lawyers, which would be impossible (or at least controversial) in our universe.

* ...return to her [[{{OneTreeHill}} hometown in North Carolina with her teenaged son.]] Her real name was Karen, and "Mandy" was just a professional pseudonym she took up while working in Washington. Bartlett and the White House security had to know "Mandy"/Karen's real name, of course, for security purposes (because after all, this ''is'' TheWhiteHouse), but the public only knew her as "Mandy" in order to protect her privacy and allow her son to have a relatively normal life. Eventually when Karen moved back to Tree Hill, nobody seemed to even realize that she had been one of Bartlett's staff members.

<<|WildMassGuessing|>>

[[WMG: FBI Special Agent Mike Casper is merely a cover identity for SHIELD Agent [[Film/TheAvengers Phil Coulson]]]]

When Sam meets Will and Elsie working on their Californian campaign, he instantly assumes that they are, or were, romantically involved. It's a reasonable assumption for an Aaron Sorkin show - two young, attractive people of the appropriate gender working together are almost guaranteed to have some kind of romantic history, the more excruciating the better. But Will describes Elsie as his "stepsister", so that's out. And yet - why make her a ''step''sister? For the same reason Boone and Shannon on {{Lost}} were stepsiblings - so they could have a shocking incestuous affair without genetic issues. This would explain why Will is so reluctant to work in the White House - he's afraid of being found out and causing yet another scandal for the administration. Presumably, this storyline was quietly dropped when Aaron Sorkin left the show, and Elsie with him.

** This is the generally accepted explanation. Ford then won the 1974 election, then lost in 1978 to D W Newman (a JimmyCarter analogue), who would in turn lose in 1982 to Owen Lassiter (a RonaldReagan analogue), who would serve two terms before being succeeded by an unnamed centrist Republican (judging by how Leo was a cabinet member despite being a Democrat), who also served two terms before Bartlet's first win in 1998.

[[WMG: FBI Special Agent Mike Casper is merely a cover identity of SHIELD Agent [[Film/TheAvengers Phil Coulson]]]]
[[Film/IronMan Tony]] was righter than he knew when he said that Coulson's first name was agent...

[[WMG: Mandy was an [[HarryPotter Auror]]]]

[[WMG: The First Lady Abagail Bartlet was once known as [[Film/{{Grease}} Rizzo]]

[[WMG: The First Lady Abagail Bartlet was once known as [[Film/Grease Rizzo]]]]