Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
As season 5 opens, Republican Speaker Glen Allen Walken is already acting president after Bartlet transferred his authority after Zoey’s kidnapping. Walken orders strikes on Qumari camps while the kidnappers demand that American forces leave Qumar. The FBI eventually finds Zoey at a Virginia barn after a state trooper follows up on an unrelated domestic-disturbance call. Federal agents rescue her from the captors; she is drugged and bruised, with a broken clavicle, but alive. Bartlet then resumes the presidency, shaken by the crisis and the preceding assassination of Qumar’s Abdul Shareef.
The return to ordinary government leaves Bartlet negotiating with a Republican-controlled Congress. With Jeff Haffley succeeding Walken as Speaker, Haffley blocks Bartlet’s preferred vice-presidential choice, Secretary of State Lewis Berryhill. Bartlet eventually accepts the politically safer Bob Russell, whose confirmation brings Will Bailey into the new vice president’s office. Budget talks with Haffley collapse into a government shutdown, while Josh and Toby later work around the same divided Congress to broker a pair of Supreme Court nominations.
Near the season’s end, a congressional fact-finding delegation in Gaza is hit by a roadside bomb. Admiral Percy Fitzwallace and other members of the party are killed, while Donna is badly wounded and flown to Germany for treatment. Josh stays with her and is frightened again when she develops a pulmonary embolism and needs emergency surgery. Back in Washington, Bartlet and Leo disagree over whether to retaliate militarily; Kate brings word that Palestinian leaders are willing to talk. Bartlet holds off on an immediate strike, and the season closes as the Palestinian chairman publicly claims to accept an invitation to Camp David that the White House has not formally issued, leaving the response to the bombing unresolved.