The third season, covering the administration's third and fourth years in office, begins with Bartlet announcing his intention to run for re-election and is dominated by the subsequent campaign.

Other prominent story lines include a Congressional investigation into allegations Bartlet committed electoral fraud by concealing his MS, a death threat against C.J.

and the ensuing relationship she develops with the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her, and Qumari defense minister Abdul Shareef's planning of terrorist attacks against the US.

The President vetoes his first bill—the repeal of the estate tax—and staffers scramble to counter the GOP's override threat, first having to deal with an opportunistic Democratic congressman before Sam has an idea that leads them to a surprising ally.

An American spy submarine suddenly goes silent in hostile waters outside North Korea, and President Bartlet must decide whether he should notify the enemy or attempt a risky, secret rescue.

Sam is dismayed by a new formula for poverty and Josh goes diplomatic on a case involving a Georgia teen who killed his teacher and fled to Italy.

argues with senior staff over whether to make public the possibility of an outbreak of mad cow disease, as well as the renewal of a lease on a Qumari military base despite her horror with that nation's treatment of women.

Leo testifies before a Congressional committee on the MS matter, recalling several critical moments from the Bartlet campaign and a personal slip-up that could end his career and badly damage the President.

In other stories, Josh puts his foot in his mouth over his courtship of Amy, Sam is angry over a White House tell-all book, and Charlie's heartfelt purchase of an old Middle East map for the President leads to some political problems.

As a result, the President demands that a passage ambitiously promising a crusade to cure cancer within ten years be included in the speech.

As Sam is very reluctantly interviewed for a Vanity Fair profile by Lisa Sherborne, who was once his fiancée, he lays out the process by which a State of the Union address comes about.

Sam knows that the pledge to cure cancer is noble and the kind of over-reaching government should do, but also that for political reasons it cannot be included in the final speech and removes it.

Attracted to Amy Gardner, a prominent women's rights leader, Josh tries to persuade her that her burgeoning romance with a Congressman is solely a result of political machinations.

The staff debates whether to counter a fast-rising Republican presidential candidate's verbal assault on affirmative action at the Iowa caucuses and Josh postpones his tropical vacation with women's rights advocate Amy Gardner to defuse a risky situation in Vieques, Puerto Rico.

Toby discusses the inclusion of a Sinn Féin member in the guest list of a White House event with British Ambassador Lord John Marbury (Roger Rees).

When a truck carrying uranium fuel rods crashes in a remote Idaho tunnel, President Bartlet's staff prepares for a potential environmental or terrorist crisis.

voices her personal indignation that a group of schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia were prevented from escaping a burning building by religious police because they were not dressed properly according to Sharia law.

is assigned Secret Service Special Agent Simon Donovan (Mark Harmon) for personal protection, and he tells her that the individual who is targeting her has no connection to jihadists.

Toby tries to help a Russian journalist he thinks is being suppressed by her government, and Charlie unravels a mystery involving a long-lost letter to Franklin Roosevelt.

Meanwhile, Toby plays hardball with network TV executives who want to cut national convention coverage, and Sam's plan to keep dirty tricks out of the presidential campaign blows up in his face.

The website's critical consensus reads, "The West Wing still fires off enthralling repartee as if the series' wit was mandated by executive order, but this underwhelming third season finds the series' idealism curdling into a smug self-satisfaction that can't seem to stop wondering why real politics can't be as simple as they are in the fantasy world Aaron Sorkin has crafted.