S3E11 · 100,000 Airplanes

Complete story — includes the ending

While the White House staff works intensely on the President's State of the Union speech, President Bartlet and the First Lady have dinner with a group of her scientist friends who speculate that sphingosine kinase could lead to a cure for cancer. As a result, the President demands that a passage ambitiously promising a crusade to cure cancer within ten years be included in the speech. Sam is the point man for the speech, which is billed as the most important of the President's career and one whose failure could end his hopes for re-election. As Sam is very reluctantly interviewed for a Vanity Fair profile by Lisa Sherborne, who was once his fiancée, he lays out the process by which a State of the Union address comes about. Sam knows that the pledge to cure cancer is noble and the kind of over-reaching government should do, but also that for political reasons it cannot be included in the final speech and removes it. He takes out most of his frustrations on Lisa who finally tells Sam she is taking herself off the story, reminding him that it was he and not her who ended their engagement. Attracted to Amy Gardner, a prominent women's rights leader, Josh tries to persuade her that her burgeoning romance with a Congressman is solely a result of political machinations. Note: The episode title refers to the number of United States Army Air Forces planes built during World War II, double the target announced by then-President Franklin Roosevelt.