PRESIDENT BARTLET: Sorry, I got tied up.
SAM: No, it's fine.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Let's get back to it.
SAM: You know sir, I looked something up while you were gone.
Eisenhower, it seemed at all costs wanted to avoid sending ships to
resupply Quemoy and Matsu because they'd be less than a mile from the Chinese army.
A private could, well,
everybody was a private in Mau's army,
but a private could fire on the ship and that'd be it.
There'd be a war. There'd have to be. Eisenhower wouldn't do it.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: No.
SAM: Why are you?
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Look at the whole board.
SAM: I am.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: You're not.
SAM: I'm trying.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Sam.
SAM: Why put the carrier groups in the Taiwan Strait?
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Are they in the Taiwan Strait?
SAM: They're on their way.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Is that the same thing?
SAM: To this end.
OFFICIAL: Sir.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Like this.
Turn them around.
I'll make some calls and thank people.
OFFICIAL: Yes, sir.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Thank you by the way.
OFFICIAL: You too.
SAM: I'd like to try it without looking at them now.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Okay.
SAM: China agrees to stand down the war games.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Right.
SAM: They agreed to let Taiwan test the Patriots. One Patriot.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Yes.
SAM: Please I want to be right about this.
We agree not to sell Taiwan
the Aegis destroyers for a period of, I don't know, five years.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: Ten years. But you got it.
SAM: Sir. The Aegis radar technology isn't something that, I mean,
what if Taiwan did fall to China and now they have,
plus these ships cost something like $800 million a piece.
Buying four of them would eat up half of Taiwan's defense budget.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: And so?
SAM: You never were going to sell them the destroyers.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: But everybody wakes up alive in the morning and saves a little face.
SAM: I don't know how you... I don't know the word. I don't know how you do it.
PRESIDENT BARTLET: You have a lot of help. You listen to everybody and then you call the play.
Sam, you're going to run for president one day. Don't be scared.
You've been doing. I believe in you. That's checkmate.
[BACKGROUND VOICES].