del Valle The West Wing Pilot

In the beginning of the show, Josh presented the President with a “pressing political issue” when he upset the Christian activist by insulting her and her beliefs by yelling, “the God you’re praying to is probably too busy being indicted by tax fraud.” This upset many individuals, therefore forcing the President to make the decision to keep him in the office, or let him go; a hard decision considering on one hand keeping him would look bad to the public after what he had said and the other hand letting him go being equally as hard because of the things Josh had done for him. Another pressing political issue in the show was the issue of the Cubans coming over in “rafts” to the United States, and deciding how to approach this situation. Specifically, the President had to decide whether to allow them to come, or try to keep them out by stopping them first and searching them in an attempt to find something illegal to keep them out. By law the President could not, on normal circumstances, turn them away, so by doing so he would cause conflict with those who believed all should be accepted into the country for salvation, however he knew having them come could cause many problems with the people they would interact with, so by finding something on them, such as illegal drugs, it could fix that dilemma. In this episode, the most pressing political issue seemed to be pleasing the whole public, finding the happy medium in between two opposing sides, and fixing problems aroused by differing opinions.