In this episode of The West Wing, President Bartlet gives a State of the Union, and Sam grapples with the fact that announcing a goal to cure cancer didn’t make it into the speech.

This Monday, President Biden gave a speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, where he urged Americans to come together for the “national purpose” of ending cancer “as we know it”. In February the President set a goal in the US to cut cancer fatalities by 50% over the next 25 years and is hoping to move the country closer to that goal.

In The West Wing, the President did not mention curing cancer in his speech. The Bartlet Administration thought it would be too hard for the federal government to pull together in time for the speech, too medically out of reach to be reasonably feasible, and too costly. In President Biden’s speech, he was looking towards a narrower goal of reducing fatalities by 50% in 25 years, calling on the Private sector, rather than going for President Bartlet's goal of curing cancer in 10 years. Not to mention, It has been 20 years since the 100,000 Airplanes came out, years in which science has been developing.

Experts believe that what the President posed is possible, however, one problem in The West Wing, perhaps expectably, still applies to today’s world, the large monetary investment necessary to make it happen.

Currently, although in 2016 1.8 billion was dedicated over 7 years for cancer research, President Biden’s current initiative lacks investment on par with that of Kennedy’s Apollo Program, causing him to look to the private sector for investment.

It can be hard not to wonder why the federal government doesn’t simply pour money into the cause of curing cancer, something that causes over 1,000 Americans to die each day, especially when watching the country spend billions of dollars on things such as the Artemis Program.

However, can a President really cause a cure to be found by simply announcing that he wants it to happen? JFK announced that we would go to the moon, and we did. Would announcing that we will cure cancer really be that different?

President Bartlet in a different episode gave a fitting anecdote:

“There was a man named Canute, one of the great Viking kings of the 11th Century. Wanted his people to be aware of his limitations, so he led them down to the sea and he commanded that the tide roll out. It didn't. Who gave us the notion that Presidents can move the economy like a play-toy? That we can do more than talk it up or smooth over the rough spots? It's a lie. What we really owe that union is the truth.”

The thing is, we did go to the moon. And not only did we go once, but there are plans for us to go again. It takes 10-15 years to create vaccines, and through funding and collaboration with the government, in a global pandemic, vaccines were able to reach the population in around a year.

We were challenged to go to the moon and challenged to make a vaccine. In both instances it was a race against time, to beat the Russians, then to beat the disease.

We have proved that we can overcome challenges.

Maybe it is simply that the President’s job is not to roll back the tide, but to inspire the American people to bring the next wave of advancement.