Does the Bartlett cabinet include a Secretary of State? I don’t watch the show as much as I’d like, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Certainly you’d expect to have the Secretary of State involved in a Middle East summit rather than having the White House Communications Director leading discussion groups.
Normally, I’m sure everyone is used to Margaret being the only West Wing staffer who always knows where Leo is. Josh is certainly too busy to spend his time watching over Leo. Of course, in the off-limits atmosphere, Margaret was probably back at the White House, only knowing that Leo was somewhere at Camp David. So it isn’t too surprising that Leo could sort of drop off everyone’s radar.
The only time I’ve seen State was when Bartlett had called his cabinet together to tell them about his invocation of the 25th amendment. He told them he wanted them on board and he wanted it unanimous. He went around the table. When he got to State, he said, “State?”. State said, “Yes.”
We saw the Secretary of State last season, it’s Lewis Berryhill. William Devane played him. Berryhill was the first choice to replace Hoynes as Vice-President. I think in Bartlett World Berryhill is still the SoS, even though he somehow wasn’t invited to Camp David (perhaps he was on a critical mission to Timbuktu?), while the Vice-President’s chief-of-staff was, and the president’s speech writer is given the all important task of loosening up the Israeli Defense Minister, and a NSC newbie is the only one with all perfect ideas at the perfect moments.
Oh well. I’d much rather that they’d given the summit the same ending all such summits have had in real life…
Rumor has it he’ll still be around for a while, in a diminished capacity. If not: He had the heart attack to show you how big a deal quitting really was for him.
Chest pains are often mistaken for heartburn, especially by reasonably fit people in otherwise good health, who have no history of heart disease, but a long history of stress-related indigestion and acid reflux. The show made a point of showing Leo gobbling antacids, and the stress of the last few episodes speaks for itself.
Although I haven’t had a heart attack, I have had many other cardiac problems, and it’s much easier to recognize symptoms in others than yourself. You convince yourself it’s your imagination, or heartburn, or fatigue. Also, my experience with A-Fib was that it made me disoriented and almost foggy, which doesn’t help you correctly assess your situation. I can only assume that the symptoms leading to a heart attack do some ot the same thing.
Most TV heart attacks strike without warning. This time, I think they got it right. I was impressed with how well they portrayed the symptoms early in the episode without beating us over the head with it. Leo’s coloring was awful; he was sweating, complaining of indigestion, and John Spencer absolutely nailed the slightly off-kilter gait when he was walking with Bartlett earlier in the day.