Mind you, this is damning with extremely faint praise.
I actually enjoyed this episode quite a bit, especially the reasonably fair presentation on alternate energy sources, capped off by President Bartlet (he of the Nobel Prize in Economics) coming out at the end of the episode to explain that it's all economics and that the Saudis want to control the price of oil to keep alternate energy sources priced out of the market.
Which I've known for a long time. But it's nice to see it in a politically-oriented prime-time drama.