I really have to straighten out another reviewer who complains that this was a poor season opener - that we should have had an antiterrorist based episode instead. This was not the season opener - that honour goes to "Isaac and Ishmael", and this can be seen as a relaxed recovery back into the main storyline after the tensions of that episode. Over the last two seasons parallels have become obvious between Jed Bartlet and Franklin Roosevelt. Aided by the communications of the time, FDR successfully kept quiet the fact that he had been smitten by polio or Guillaume-Barré Syndrome in the 1920s. Many Americans to this day are unaware that he was confined to a wheelchair. All his famous wartime photographs show him seated. Like Bartlet, he won on the basis of his immense personal charm and popular support. It was because of his 4th-term re-election, shortly before his death, that it was felt necessary, by the 22nd Amendment, to amend the Constitution to limit Presidents to two terms.
Review of Manchester: Part I
