A New Regime at the White House - GOP Takes Over 'West Wing'

When President Josiah Bartlet learned that his daughter Zoey had been kidnapped by terrorists, he temporarily stepped down rather than risk letting his personal anguish sway his judgment as commander in chief.

And that typically noble decision was his last.

The vice presidency is vacant (because of a sex scandal), and next in line is the speaker of the House, Glenallen Walken (John Goodman), who barrels into the Oval Office like a right-wing Lyndon B. Johnson, barking orders and slapping down equivocators.

He gives the F.B.I. one more day to find the kidnappers before ordering a retaliatory strike. "But if Zoey Bartlet turns up dead," he says, "I'm going to blow up something. God only knows what happens next."

As Walken, Mr. Goodman sheds all his usual bonhomie and lets the Bartlet loyalists know who is boss the way Johnson was wont to: he makes the press secretary, C. J. Cregg, come in close to straighten his tie while he questions her loyalty. His supercilious congressional aides do not bother to cloak their contempt for their Democratic hosts. Meanwhile the president and first lady are huddled refugees in a guest suite of their own White House, waiting for a whisper of hope, like ordinary distraught parents.

Walken is a hawk and an unrefined bully. (He has a small, yapping dog that sits on antique silk armchairs and has to be walked by senior aides.) But as a commander in chief, he is also decisive, strong-willed and surprisingly good at news conferences. When asked by a reporter if he regrets his predecessor's secret order to assassinate a Qumari terrorist leader, Walken retorts, "My regret is that we only got to kill the bastard once."