Quotes from A Proportional Response
C.J. to Josh: Wow, are you stupid.
Josh: I really think I'm the best judge of what I mean, you paranoid Berkeley shiksa feminista! Whoah, that was way too far.
C.J.: No, no. Well, I've got a staff meeting to go to and so do you, you elitistist Harvard fascist missed-the-dean's-list-two-semesters-in-a-row Yankee jack-ass!
Josh: Feel better gettin' that off your chest there, C.J.?
C.J.: I'm a whole new woman.
Josh: You look like a million bucks, by the way.
C.J.: Don't try to make up with me.
Bartlet: Mrs. Landingham, I can't seem to find my glasses anywhere. Could you please do whatever it is you do when I can't find my glasses?
Toby: There is no law, there is no decency.
Josh: He's just gettin' that now.
Leo: Let's do this right.
Josh: Not much chance of that.
C.J.: I don't care what it is, I care what it looks like.
Sam: And I care what it is!
Bartlet: What is the virtue of a proportional response?
Bartlet: I am suggesting, General, that you, and Admiral Fitzwallace, and Secretary Hutchinson, and the rest of the national security team take the next sixty minutes and put together an American response scenario that doesn't make me think we are just docking somebody's damn allowance!
Charlie: Sir, I...
Josh: Seriously, Charlie, we call the president "sir." Everyone else is, "Hey, when am I going to get that thing I asked for?"
Sam: You ever tried to overthrow the government?
Charlie: No, sir.
Sam: What the hell's been stopping you?
Josh: Tough day.
Fitzwallace: It'll be a lot tougher on them than on us.
Josh: Good.
Fitzwallace: Presidents don't make new friends, that's why they gotta hang onto their old ones.
Leo: Do you have any problem with a young black man waiting on the president?
Fitzwallace: I'm an old black man and I wait on the president.
Leo: The kid's gotta carry his bags and...
Fitzwallace: You gonna pay him a decent wage?
Leo: Yeah.
Fitzwallace: You gonna treat him with respect in the work place?
Leo: Yeah.
Fitzwallace: Then why the hell should I care?
Leo: That's what I thought.
Fitzwallace: I got some real honest-to-God battles to fight, Leo, I don't have time for the cosmetic ones.
Danny: Not for nothing, but I know Sam Seaborn's been going around with a three-thousand dollar a night call girl, and I thought you should know that I know. Ask me inside, C.J.
C.J.: Inside.
Bartlet: Oh, Leo, when I think of all the work you put in to get to me run, when I think of all the work you did to get me elected... I could pummell your ass with a baseball bat.
Charlie: I've never felt like this before.
Josh: It doesn't go away.
Bartlet: Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the words "Civis Romanis" I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens. Where was Morris' protection, or anyone else on that plane? Where is the retribution for the families and where is the warning to the rest of the world that Americans shall walk this earth unharmed, lest the clenched fist of the most mighty military force in the history of mankind comes crashing down on your house!? In otherwords, Leo, what the hell are we doing here?
Leo: We are behaving the way a superpower ought to behave.
Bartlet: Well our behavior has produced some pretty crappy results. In fact, I'm not a hundred percent sure it hasn't induced them.
Leo: What are you talking about?
Bartlet: I'm talking about two hundred and eight-six American marines in Beirut, I'm talking about Somalia, I'm talking about Nairobi.
Leo: And you think ratching up the body count's gonna act as a deterrent?
Bartlet: You're damn right.
Leo: Then you are just as dumb as these guys who think that capital punishment is going to be a deterrent for drug kingpins. As if drug kingpins didn't live their day to day lives under the possibility of execution. And their executions are a lot less dainty than ours and tend to take place without the bother and expense of due process. So my friend, if you want to start using American military strength as the arm of the Lord, you can do that, we're the only superpower left. You can conquer the world, like Charlemenge, but you better be prepared to kill everyone and you better start with me cause I will raise up an army against you and I will beat you!
Bartlet: He had a ten-day-old baby at home.
Leo: I know.
Bartlet: We are doing nothing. They dest...
Leo: We are not doing nothing. Four high rated military targets.
Bartlet: And this is good?
Leo: Of course it's not good, there is no good. It's what there is. It's how you behave if you're the most powerful nation in the world. It's proportional, it's reasonable, it's responsible, it's merciful. It's not nothing, four high rated military targets.
Bartlet: Which they'll rebuild again in six months.
Leo: So we'll blow 'em up again in six months! We're getting really good at it.
(beat) It's what our fathers taught us.
Fitzwallace: Excuse me, Leo, but pardon me, Mr. President, just what else is there?
Bartlet: A disproportional response. Let the word ring forth from this time and this place, you kill an American, any American, we don't come back with a proportional response, we come back (bangs fist on table) with total disaster!
General: Are you suggesting we carpet-bomb Damascus?
Bartlet: General, I am suggesting that you and Admiral Fitzwallace and Secretary Hutchinson and the rest of the national security team take the next sixty minutes and put together a U.S. response scenario that doesn't make me think we are just docking somebody's damn allowance!
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