I always thought Toby was Bartlett's conscience. When POTUS was too close to only caring about politics, Toby often opened his eyes. When Toby arranged for the formal funeral for the homeless veteran (IMO, the best Christmas episode), and the President said what if every homeless veteran came seeking such a thing, Toby just sort of glances at him, looks away and says something to the effect of, "We should only hope." To me, that scene summed up Toby's relationship with the president.
Yes, John Spencer's death was so sad! Originally, Santos was supposed to lose, but they changed the script because after Leo's death, that would have been too much. Also, I think they were considering continuing the new series with Smits as the president, but that died with Leo as well.
When you look back, though, that campaign was very fortuitous of WW. You had a young, handsome, virtually unknown minority candidate going up against an older, experienced, moderate Republican who was being pushed to the right by his campaign. Remind you of any other presidential campaign???
