Bartlet has on his desk a plaque reading "O God, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small." John F. Kennedy had a plaque with the same inscription on his Oval Office desk
In the first scene where CJ and Annabeth are having a "walk and talk", they exaggerated their height differences by having Kristin Chenoweth walk barefoot, while Allison Janney wore boots.
When talking to Toby, Vice-President Robert Russell (Gary Cole) reveals he has a gay nephew. He also makes a somewhat prescient comment about same-sex marriage being legal in ten years if done right. In real life, the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, decided in June 2015, legalized same-sex marriage ten years and six months from the air date of this episode.
Bartlett recites, "How body from spirit does slowly unwind/Until we are pure spirit at the end." This comes from the poem "Infirmity" by Theodore Roethke.