Plot
When former President Owen Lassiter dies, two other ex-Presidents (former President D. Wire Newman and former Acting President Glen Allen Walken) fly on Air Force One with President Josiah Bartlet to attend the funeral. Onboard, Bartlet's two historic guests partake in a lively debate about their administrations. Lassiter's and Newman's past mistakes haunt the current administration when massive pro-democracy protests are held across Saudi Arabia and the protesters surround a compound containing 50 Americans, leaving Bartlet to decide whether to support the Saudi regime or to risk the fragile status quo by supporting the protesters' efforts. Meanwhile, C.J. Cregg investigates claims that DARPA is conducting experiments on mind control. Leo discovers his ex-wife is engaged to be married. And Josh referees a debate between representatives of Connecticut and North Carolina, concerning an original copy of the Bill of Rights allegedly stolen by Connecticut at the end of the Civil War.
Much of the episode centers on this quote of Abraham Lincoln, from which the title is taken: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present."
Read more about this topic: The Stormy Present
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)