You can win if you run a smart, disciplined campaign, if you studiously say nothing — nothing that causes you trouble, nothing that’s a gaffe, nothing that shows you might think the wrong thing, nothing that shows you think. But it just isn’t worthy of us[…]

It isn’t worthy of us, it isn’t worthy of America, it isn’t worthy of a great nation. We’re gonna write a new book, right here, right now. This very moment. Today.

I think the great hope of myself and so many others was that Howard Dean would be our Bartlet, a dark horse who wasn’t suppposed to win but did, who could run a campaign that was different, who could be idealistic to a fault, who could change the level of discourse. Well, he was eaten alive. Perhaps there is a reason why The West Wing is fiction.