Bruno Gianelli walks in.
BARTLET
What the hell is this? [waves the poll in his hand]
BRUNO
Sorry?
BARTLET
What is this?
BRUNO
I don't know what you're waving.
BARTLET
[gets up and walks over to Bruno] It's a poll. I asked to see a poll about certain... doesn't matter. They sent up the wrong poll. This one asks voters where I should spend Thanksgiving.
BRUNO
Yeah.
BARTLET
What the hell are you doing polling where I should spend Thanksgiving?
BRUNO
Well, New England doesn't get us anything that we don't already have, and there was a sense it could be seen as political, with New Hampshire, the first primary state.
BARTLET
I have Thanksgiving with my family.
BRUNO
Yeah, yeah. People like that.
BARTLET
Thank god!
BRUNO
Mr. President...
BARTLET
You politicize family to make sure they don't look political.
BRUNO
Don't get me started on ironies.
BARTLET
My family is off limits. [throws the poll on the couch and walks to his desk]
BRUNO
Sir... your candor about a terrible illness was off limits. [Bartlet turns to look at him.] Your regimen of self-medication was off limits. Due respect, you've used up your off limits.
BARTLET
I'll decide when I've used them up. You don't poll where my family goes, am I making myself clear?
BRUNO
Mh-huhmm... Sometimes I have a difficulty talking to people who don't race sailboats.
BARTLET
What?
BRUNO
[comes closer] I have difficulty sometimes talking to people who don't race sailboats.
When I was a teenager, I crewed Larchmont to Nassau on a 58-foot sloop called Cantice. There was a little piece of kelp that was stuck to the hull, and even though it was little, you don't want anything stuck to the hull. So, I take a boat hook on a pole and I stick it in the water and I try to get the kelp off, when seven guys start screaming at me, right? 'Cause now the pole is causing more drag than the kelp was.
See, what you gotta do is you gotta drop it in and let the water lift it out in a windmill motion. Drop it in, and let the water take it by the kelp and lift it out. In, and out. In, and out, till you got it.
[beat] The voters aren't choosing a plumber, Mr. President. They are choosing a president. And if you don't think that your family should matter, my suggestion to you is to get out of professional politics. And if you think that I'm going to miss even one opportunity to pick up half-a-mile boat speed, you're absolutely out of your mind. When it costs us nothing, when we give up nothing?! You're out of your mind.
— Aaron Sorkin, 'The West Wing: The Indians in the Lobby'