Chapter 10: In Order To Form A More Perfect Union
"We, the people of the United States…"
"Josh."
I keep my eyes fixed on the podium in the hopes that if I ignore the Vice-President, maybe he'll go away. Juvenile, possibly, but desperate times and all that. I want to hear this speech. Take thirty minutes to enjoy the glow of the thing. Even if my involvement in the actual writing process was limited to being Toby's target for his rubber balls when he wanted to throw them at something that made a more satisfying sound than the thump on the wall, and to keeping Sam supplied with caffeine. That's not the point. The glow. Of the thing. It's not like we won't all be brought back down to earth with a thump tomorrow morning.
"Josh."
Unfortunately, John Hoynes is incapable of taking a hint even when they're not so much hints as they are veritable battering rams.
"Mr Vice President."
"This is a good night for you."
"Yes, sir."
I refrain from pointing out that had he not defected from the administration, it would have been a good night for him, too. We're stuck with him until January. When he leaked the news that he would be challenging us – a leak, by the way, that we were left to find out through a no-name reporter in the middle of a press briefing – he didn't accompany it with a letter of resignation.
"Who's the new guy going to be?"
"You'll find that out in about ten minutes, sir."
It's not public knowledge and it's not information that we've made available to the press, but most Democratic members of the House and the Senate know. I'm amazed he hasn't already found out. There's an uncomfortable silence. I have no intention of breaking it and he clearly doesn't plan on going away and leaving me alone. I would bet actual money on what he's here to say, but he doesn't seem to be in any hurry.
"So, you and Sam."
"Right."
"Were you two… you know… when you were working for me?"
I don't think that I have, in my life, said the words 'no' and 'comment' as much as I have in the last four days. Nobody, aside from our friends, knows any details of our relationship. That doesn't seem to stop them writing about it, but still. And no. We weren't. When I was working for Hoynes. We may have been a lot of things – stupid, miserable, and poster children for denial come to mind – but Sam was never unfaithful to Lisa and I never cheated on the apocalyptic disaster of a relationship that was my years with Mandy. But I'm not about to tell him that.
"With all due respect, Mr Vice President, I don't believe that that's any of your business."
"Josh, you're both men, you're both senior advisors to the President, and you're sleeping together. Your personal life…"
"Will remain that way until it jeopardizes my ability to do my job or until it causes me to break the law. Sir."
And I have the backing of Sam Seaborn, my mother, the White House senior staff, the President of the United States, and forty-six percent of the American people. I don't much care about the other fifty-four percent so long as it doesn't cause us to lose reelection. It's none of their business either.
"I was going to say that it stopped being your personal life as soon as you got into the White House."
Sure. Did you hear the rumor that the President has multiple sclerosis and he never told anyone?
"I'm didn't withhold anything from my constituents – and I'm not an elected official, so actually, had no constitutents to withhold anything from in the first place – and I'm not doing anything illegal." I'm going to have to hope my mom is taping this because I seem to be missing a significant proportion of the live show. "John…"
"Mr Vice President."
"Mr Vice President," I repeat, making a face inside my head. "How about you just tell me what you came over here to tell me."
"Josh…"
"Sir. You'll be seeking the Presidency as a third-party candidate, right."
"No."
"What?"
"I won't be running as a third-party candidate."
"You wo… I'm sorry, what?"
"I'm dropping out of…"
"Yes. Thank you. I heard." It's that, you know, my ears are hearing the words and my ears are connected to my brain, but my brain is refusing to process that. I make a couple of false starts before I finally manage to get a full sentence out."Mr Vice President, what in the name of God are you talking about?"
"I had been living under the delusion that this was news that would make you happy."
"I suppose."
"It doesn't?"
"It… I don't understand why you're doing this."
"I want to do the right thing. For once." He looks as though, in a less potentially public forum, he would laugh. "I made some mistakes. I made some decisions that I wish I hadn't. I was never the man you wanted me to be. After the MS, I didn't think that you guys would win re-election in a million years, but the Democrats, at least… they still want him to be their President. Josh, if I run, neither of us will win. I know that and you know that and your pollster knows that and so does probably the intern in the basement, and if I'm being given a choice between Jed Bartlet and Robert Ritchie, then the truth is that I still want him to be my President, too."
"I appreciate that."
"Let him know that I'm through. And that starting tomorrow morning, I'll be endorsing his ticket."
"You don't want to hear who else is on it before you commit to that?"
"I don't need to."
"Well… okay, then." I glance briefly at the podium before returning my eyes to Hoynes. "Thank you, Mr Vice President."
"Least I could do."
He nods and backs away. I blink. Several times. I waste a good minute and a half wondering if Donna slipped some kind of mind-altering substance into my coffee this morning before I remember that hell will freeze over before Donna brings me coffee, hallucinogenic or otherwise. I glance reflexively at my surroundings and realise that I'm standing in the middle of the Democratic National Convention looking as though I've completely lost control of my higher brain function and my motor functions.
With an effort, I pick my jaw up off the floor and try to consider this calmly.
It takes another thirty seconds for me to reach the decision that that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
I'm having trouble deciding what to feel. Part of me is relieved that this is no longer the three-way race we all expected. While I'd still sell my soul for my Republican counterpart in this campaign to not be Ann Stark – between her uncensored opinion of me and mine of her, her history with Toby, her last encounter with CJ, and the glowering look we all get over the top of his glasses every time she's been mentioned in Sam's hearing in the last four days, I'm seriously considering the feasibility of us lasting the final seven weeks of this campaign without any of us having to meet with her – it's less… calamitous for her to be doing what she's doing if we're not running against our soon-to-be ex-Vice President at the same time as we're running against her boss. Part of me wants to know if that was an alien inhabiting John Hoynes's body and that part isn't completely kidding. And, yes, part of me is exceedingly pissed that he had the nerve to ask what he asked.
Relief seems to be winning. Marginally. Just.
It doesn't negate the fact that I wasn't aware John Hoynes even knew there was such a thing as being gracious loser. The production the President had to go through in order to convince him to become the Vice Presidential candidate on the '98 ticket is testament to his inability to concede defeat. Therefore, I can probably be excused having just been knocked back on my ass by having been handed what amounts to his complete withdrawal from any part in this race, plus his endorsement for our part in it.
I put the issue of the world having pretty much just tilted on its proverbial axis to one side and redirect my attention to the President.
"It's over two centuries since an alliance formed on the commons at Concord, Massachusetts, and in that time it's possible that we've lost sight of what we came here to do. The world has changed, and we have changed with it, but that does not mean that we should no longer stand for those values. We are for freedom of speech everywhere, we are for freedom of worship for everyone, we are for the freedom to learn for everybody, and those values are more relevant to our society today than they have ever been. America was founded on these values. It's time we took America back. We are for the right to live, to learn, and to love for everyone, regardless of their gender, colour, creed, or orientation."
What?
When the hell did that happen?
"These are great challenges, they are challenges worth meeting, and they are challenges too great for a Potemkin presidency."
When did that happen?
I've read this speech. Many times. I've read that paragraph, and the right to love wasn't in the staff copy yesterday, the list of 'regardless of' stopped after creed, and I'm pretty sure I would have remembered that sentence in which the President just stood at a podium and called Ritchie a puppet had it been in the draft they gave me.
When I get Toby on his own, I'm going to kill him.
I would add the President to that, but I'm pretty sure the Secret Service would have me on the ground before I got within two feet.
When I cast my eye around for Sam in the sea of staffers, his face has a look on it that says he's thinking homicidal thoughts, a look that I suspect is mirrored on my own.
"It is an honor and a privilege for me to introduce the person who will be working alongside me in these endeavours, my nominee for the Vice Presidency of the United States, Admiral Percy Fitzwallace."
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
April 2002 – Five Months Earlier
"We have a problem."
I made this announcement to Toby, Sam, CJ, Joey – and, by extension, Kenny – Donna, Ed, and Larry when I dropped a pile of folders on the table in the Roosevelt Room on what felt like the first Monday morning since the Iowa Caucus that I'd been in Washington and not on the road. An announcement that was barely a blip on anyone's radar, as Toby pointed out in no uncertain terms.
"We have any number of problems, Josh, not the least of which is a re-election campaign defined as problematic at best, so if you wouldn't mind being a little more specific."
"The South Carolina primary is next week."
"Having been a professional political strategist my whole life, not to mention that my boss is running in it, I think I speak for everyone when I say that we knew that."
"And," I continued, ignoring Toby, "Before anyone says that I'm getting worked up over this too early, you all know as well as I do that once we get to Super Tuesday, it'll get put off and put off and before we know it, it'll be the Convention and we'll have to do this by picking names out of a hat."
"Vice President," Sam said.
"Right."
"We don't have an incumbent."
"Not unless we feel it's showing political strength to welcome back the guy who defected last fall with open arms, no. Leo wants a shortlist by Wednesday."
Coming up with a list of names in sixty hours was more difficult than it sounded. To begin with, the list of names needed to be electable, left-wing, but not so left-wing that we would lose the moderates, and preferably having served time in the military. We all continued to believe that Jed Bartlet was our real thing, after the MS, after everything, but none of us were dumb, and we knew that having Hoynes on the ticket in '98 had delivered the south, the military, and the moderates, three groups that wouldn't have elected a liberal academic former Governor from New England, particularly one who never served in uniform. On top of that, our names would have to be people who we had a realistic chance of getting to accept the nomination.
Plus, we were trying to do this while prepping for a primary and, you know, doing our actual jobs.
Sam was passing by my office on the Tuesday afternoon for… something that I'm sure neither one of us could remember now, and we both opened our mouths to ask the same question at the same time.
"You getting anywhere with Hoynes's replacement?"
"No."
Sam was sitting on my desk and I was slumped against the doorframe. I had been trying to do the thing with my back flat against the wall that's supposed to relax me – might work, even, if I could ever do it for long enough before someone slammed a door into my face – but had ended up just using the wall to prop me up.
"Are you okay?"
"Tired." I offered him a tiny grin. "I didn't think it would be so hard this time."
"You didn't think the President had multiple sclerosis," he pointed out quietly. "Not your fault. Nobody's fault."
"Not that. We're all doing two jobs, and I'm not saying I regret this decision, because the now thankfully ex-campaign staff were doing a pretty good job of losing this election spectacularly, I'm just saying, you know, there aren't forty-eight hours in a day. Plus," I waved a hand around. "We weren't supposed to have to look for a VP. That was supposed to be one decision we made in the first campaign that we didn't have to make in the second."
"I know."
"Yeah."
"We'll get there."
Sam got up to leave and, as he got to the door, touched my fingers briefly. Our relationship was still so much of a secret then that it was practically classified, and while we had never had any real paranoia about acting the way we had always acted, it wasn't like he could just give me a 'real' hug right there in my office with the door open. So I got miniscule physical contact and an exhausted smile. Sometimes, like then, that was enough.
"We need to figure it out tonight. We're going to be here late."
"So we'll be here late." He shrugged. "Not like we haven't all done it before, too many times to count. We'll figure it out."
And we did. The nine of us, with Chinese takeout, until three in the morning. After four hours, we had two possible names to give to Leo at senior staff five hours later, and we knew which one it would be. Because we knew that one of them would cite alcoholism, drug addiction, and a point blank refusal to leave his West Wing in the hands of, well, me, as reasons for him being unable to be elected Vice President of the United States. Because he forgets that the rest of us remember he overcame those problems, he runs the country, he served in one of the bloodiest, most pointless wars in history and would have died for his country, and we would die for him.
So we took the other name.
A man who had executed his roles in the Situation Room and the Oval Office flawlessly for over three years and counting, who nobody could accuse of being too liberal or non-military, and who we had all the respect in the world for.
And who, coincidentally, would make history when he took the oath of office.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I don't remember the last time I heard applause like that. The State of the Union, maybe, but I doubt it. The state representatives, the Senators and Governors and Congressmen and Congresswomen, they all know Fitz. Not personally and not like we do, but they know that he's a big part of the reason that we're not fightings wars with India, Pakistan, Columbia, Haiti, and Qumar right now. There are members of State who remember him being a big part of the reason, even when he was being forced to do his job by phone, that the Executive Branch and by extension the entire federal government didn't disintegrate into little pieces when the President was shot.
That's something that'll give you a lot of faith in a person's ability to be the second-ranking member of his party, you know?
The applause dies down and the President continues giving the speech, as I walk over to CJ and get her into a corner where we can still see a monitor but won't be overheard by the press.
"Hoynes is dropping out."
"He's what?"
"He isn't doing what we all said he would be doing. It's going to be a two-man…"
"Person," she snaps.
"A two-person race," I correct myself in the interests of not wanting to, you know, die. "Us and Ritchie. Hoynes is through."
"What's he asking for?"
"Nothing." I'm a little surprised when I realise that that's true. "He's giving us his endorsement. Said he wanted to do the right thing. Mostly," I admit, "I think it's that he doesn't want Rob Ritchie to be the President of the United States and he recognises that there's a far greater chance of that happening if he stays in and splits the left. He's a pain in the ass, CJ, always has been, but he's still a Democrat."
"We're releasing it?"
"Nah. Let him. He's doing it himself tomorrow morning."
"Josh…" She eyes me carefully. "You know that you don't owe him anything for this, right? If anything, it's what he should have done a while ago."
"I know. But let him do it himself. Control the news cycle; we tell the press now, that's going to be the story. We've done good, we should get our moment to just know that we did good and not need to worry about what happens next, and if that means he can drop out of the race on his own terms and not have us do it for him, we'll suck it up."
"Yeah."
"It's been a crazy week," she notes.
"Have you been moonlighting at the Department for Sublime Understatement?"
"We haven't had much time to talk."
That gets my attention in a hurry. Usually, when CJ refers to us needing to talk or not having had time to talk, it means I've done something monumentally stupid and I'm going to get loomed over and yelled at. She bites back a laugh at my apparently obvious paranoia.
"I'm not going to shout. Can't, really, not here."
"Good."
"Just… look at this. We made it. We've had possibly the worst first term in the history of the White House…"
"You can say that again," Toby mumbles, as I notice that the staff have started to gravitate over to us as the President enters the final section. "MS."
"Censure," I add.
Donna looks across at me. "Big Tobacco."
"Haiti."
"The DEA agents in Columbia."
"Sierra-Tucson."
"Galileo."
"Mrs Landingham."
"Taiwan."
"Prostitutes."
"Call girls," Sam counters with a look.
"India-Pakistan."
"Mendoza."
"Secret plan to fight inflation."
It goes on. Sam, me, Andy, Donna, Charlie, CJ, and Toby, listing the reasons that the Bartlet White House should by rights have imploded – both metaphorically, and, by the time someone brought up the lighting of a fire in a welded flue, literally as well – a long time ago, while the President's voice swells behind us. Somehow I know that this is going to culminate in a lot of drinking on the plane, when we finally get out of here in the small hours of tomorrow morning. We start to wind down, and eventually, Charlie looks me straight in the eye.
"To say nothing of too many people wanting too many of us dead for too few reasons, but we're all still here."
"And it doesn't go away," I say, holding his gaze.
We were in this position four years ago. Not having won the Presidency but having come further than nine months earlier we could have imagined possible. Last time, we didn't know what we were doing and we certainly didn't know what we were letting ourselves in for. This time, we do. It sounds insane to think that we're ready for another four years of working ninety hours a week, eating on the move, and not seeing home for days at a time. Sounds insane to think that we *want* that. This time last year, I don't think any of us could have said with absolute honesty that we did want it, but tonight, if only for these few hours, it feels like we're going to be given another shot at changing the world.
It's a good feeling.
The speech is coming to an end. I return my eyes to the President, who looks and sounds like we're feeling. That look on his face that says he's going to set the world on fire or die trying; a look that none of us have seen enough of for too long. Something else we need to change. We were kicking the final section around one night six or seven weeks ago, and Toby pulled out his copy of the State of the Union from our second year, set it down next to the preamble to the Constitution, and ten minutes later, we had the final lines.
Lines that are going to make this audience stand up like it's coming from their socks.
"The government is fallible; it's made mistakes and it will continue to make mistakes. But tonight, we leave behind our failures of the past and we set aside our worries of those failures in times to come, and we say that government can be an instrument of good, a place where people come together and where nobody gets left behind. *This* is America, *we* are the people, and we are *going* to form a more perfect union."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hey, look, guys, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Not entirely, anyway.
Um, we finally have a candidate for Vice President; I wish I could take the credit for it but Josh brought it up in 'Stirred' and I've been fixated on getting him on the ticket ever since. I would like to point out, for the record, that I ditched Hoynes a long, long time before Sorkin did. Speaking of whom: the characters and canon depicted herein are the property of Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme, and I don't give a monkeys who writes it these days. If bits of the Convention speech sounds familiar, that's because one was a line of their *actual* Convention speech and the other was a line from their State of the Union, so I guess they don't belong to me, either... oh, and neither do any of the things I stole from the preamble to the Constitution, but I'm pretty sure that the Founders and Framers didn't have copywrite law.
Thank you to everyone I usually thank for everything I usually thank them for. Rhiannon, in particular, for not yet declaring me insane and throwing away the key.
Chapter 11: Chaos Theory. You know what? I'm not even going to say it. I always jinx it when I do.
"We, the people of the United States…"
"Josh."
I keep my eyes fixed on the podium in the hopes that if I ignore the Vice-President, maybe he'll go away. Juvenile, possibly, but desperate times and all that. I want to hear this speech. Take thirty minutes to enjoy the glow of the thing. Even if my involvement in the actual writing process was limited to being Toby's target for his rubber balls when he wanted to throw them at something that made a more satisfying sound than the thump on the wall, and to keeping Sam supplied with caffeine. That's not the point. The glow. Of the thing. It's not like we won't all be brought back down to earth with a thump tomorrow morning.
"Josh."
Unfortunately, John Hoynes is incapable of taking a hint even when they're not so much hints as they are veritable battering rams.
"Mr Vice President."
"This is a good night for you."
"Yes, sir."
I refrain from pointing out that had he not defected from the administration, it would have been a good night for him, too. We're stuck with him until January. When he leaked the news that he would be challenging us – a leak, by the way, that we were left to find out through a no-name reporter in the middle of a press briefing – he didn't accompany it with a letter of resignation.
"Who's the new guy going to be?"
"You'll find that out in about ten minutes, sir."
It's not public knowledge and it's not information that we've made available to the press, but most Democratic members of the House and the Senate know. I'm amazed he hasn't already found out. There's an uncomfortable silence. I have no intention of breaking it and he clearly doesn't plan on going away and leaving me alone. I would bet actual money on what he's here to say, but he doesn't seem to be in any hurry.
"So, you and Sam."
"Right."
"Were you two… you know… when you were working for me?"
I don't think that I have, in my life, said the words 'no' and 'comment' as much as I have in the last four days. Nobody, aside from our friends, knows any details of our relationship. That doesn't seem to stop them writing about it, but still. And no. We weren't. When I was working for Hoynes. We may have been a lot of things – stupid, miserable, and poster children for denial come to mind – but Sam was never unfaithful to Lisa and I never cheated on the apocalyptic disaster of a relationship that was my years with Mandy. But I'm not about to tell him that.
"With all due respect, Mr Vice President, I don't believe that that's any of your business."
"Josh, you're both men, you're both senior advisors to the President, and you're sleeping together. Your personal life…"
"Will remain that way until it jeopardizes my ability to do my job or until it causes me to break the law. Sir."
And I have the backing of Sam Seaborn, my mother, the White House senior staff, the President of the United States, and forty-six percent of the American people. I don't much care about the other fifty-four percent so long as it doesn't cause us to lose reelection. It's none of their business either.
"I was going to say that it stopped being your personal life as soon as you got into the White House."
Sure. Did you hear the rumor that the President has multiple sclerosis and he never told anyone?
"I'm didn't withhold anything from my constituents – and I'm not an elected official, so actually, had no constitutents to withhold anything from in the first place – and I'm not doing anything illegal." I'm going to have to hope my mom is taping this because I seem to be missing a significant proportion of the live show. "John…"
"Mr Vice President."
"Mr Vice President," I repeat, making a face inside my head. "How about you just tell me what you came over here to tell me."
"Josh…"
"Sir. You'll be seeking the Presidency as a third-party candidate, right."
"No."
"What?"
"I won't be running as a third-party candidate."
"You wo… I'm sorry, what?"
"I'm dropping out of…"
"Yes. Thank you. I heard." It's that, you know, my ears are hearing the words and my ears are connected to my brain, but my brain is refusing to process that. I make a couple of false starts before I finally manage to get a full sentence out."Mr Vice President, what in the name of God are you talking about?"
"I had been living under the delusion that this was news that would make you happy."
"I suppose."
"It doesn't?"
"It… I don't understand why you're doing this."
"I want to do the right thing. For once." He looks as though, in a less potentially public forum, he would laugh. "I made some mistakes. I made some decisions that I wish I hadn't. I was never the man you wanted me to be. After the MS, I didn't think that you guys would win re-election in a million years, but the Democrats, at least… they still want him to be their President. Josh, if I run, neither of us will win. I know that and you know that and your pollster knows that and so does probably the intern in the basement, and if I'm being given a choice between Jed Bartlet and Robert Ritchie, then the truth is that I still want him to be my President, too."
"I appreciate that."
"Let him know that I'm through. And that starting tomorrow morning, I'll be endorsing his ticket."
"You don't want to hear who else is on it before you commit to that?"
"I don't need to."
"Well… okay, then." I glance briefly at the podium before returning my eyes to Hoynes. "Thank you, Mr Vice President."
"Least I could do."
He nods and backs away. I blink. Several times. I waste a good minute and a half wondering if Donna slipped some kind of mind-altering substance into my coffee this morning before I remember that hell will freeze over before Donna brings me coffee, hallucinogenic or otherwise. I glance reflexively at my surroundings and realise that I'm standing in the middle of the Democratic National Convention looking as though I've completely lost control of my higher brain function and my motor functions.
With an effort, I pick my jaw up off the floor and try to consider this calmly.
It takes another thirty seconds for me to reach the decision that that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.
I'm having trouble deciding what to feel. Part of me is relieved that this is no longer the three-way race we all expected. While I'd still sell my soul for my Republican counterpart in this campaign to not be Ann Stark – between her uncensored opinion of me and mine of her, her history with Toby, her last encounter with CJ, and the glowering look we all get over the top of his glasses every time she's been mentioned in Sam's hearing in the last four days, I'm seriously considering the feasibility of us lasting the final seven weeks of this campaign without any of us having to meet with her – it's less… calamitous for her to be doing what she's doing if we're not running against our soon-to-be ex-Vice President at the same time as we're running against her boss. Part of me wants to know if that was an alien inhabiting John Hoynes's body and that part isn't completely kidding. And, yes, part of me is exceedingly pissed that he had the nerve to ask what he asked.
Relief seems to be winning. Marginally. Just.
It doesn't negate the fact that I wasn't aware John Hoynes even knew there was such a thing as being gracious loser. The production the President had to go through in order to convince him to become the Vice Presidential candidate on the '98 ticket is testament to his inability to concede defeat. Therefore, I can probably be excused having just been knocked back on my ass by having been handed what amounts to his complete withdrawal from any part in this race, plus his endorsement for our part in it.
I put the issue of the world having pretty much just tilted on its proverbial axis to one side and redirect my attention to the President.
"It's over two centuries since an alliance formed on the commons at Concord, Massachusetts, and in that time it's possible that we've lost sight of what we came here to do. The world has changed, and we have changed with it, but that does not mean that we should no longer stand for those values. We are for freedom of speech everywhere, we are for freedom of worship for everyone, we are for the freedom to learn for everybody, and those values are more relevant to our society today than they have ever been. America was founded on these values. It's time we took America back. We are for the right to live, to learn, and to love for everyone, regardless of their gender, colour, creed, or orientation."
What?
When the hell did that happen?
"These are great challenges, they are challenges worth meeting, and they are challenges too great for a Potemkin presidency."
When did that happen?
I've read this speech. Many times. I've read that paragraph, and the right to love wasn't in the staff copy yesterday, the list of 'regardless of' stopped after creed, and I'm pretty sure I would have remembered that sentence in which the President just stood at a podium and called Ritchie a puppet had it been in the draft they gave me.
When I get Toby on his own, I'm going to kill him.
I would add the President to that, but I'm pretty sure the Secret Service would have me on the ground before I got within two feet.
When I cast my eye around for Sam in the sea of staffers, his face has a look on it that says he's thinking homicidal thoughts, a look that I suspect is mirrored on my own.
"It is an honor and a privilege for me to introduce the person who will be working alongside me in these endeavours, my nominee for the Vice Presidency of the United States, Admiral Percy Fitzwallace."
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
April 2002 – Five Months Earlier
"We have a problem."
I made this announcement to Toby, Sam, CJ, Joey – and, by extension, Kenny – Donna, Ed, and Larry when I dropped a pile of folders on the table in the Roosevelt Room on what felt like the first Monday morning since the Iowa Caucus that I'd been in Washington and not on the road. An announcement that was barely a blip on anyone's radar, as Toby pointed out in no uncertain terms.
"We have any number of problems, Josh, not the least of which is a re-election campaign defined as problematic at best, so if you wouldn't mind being a little more specific."
"The South Carolina primary is next week."
"Having been a professional political strategist my whole life, not to mention that my boss is running in it, I think I speak for everyone when I say that we knew that."
"And," I continued, ignoring Toby, "Before anyone says that I'm getting worked up over this too early, you all know as well as I do that once we get to Super Tuesday, it'll get put off and put off and before we know it, it'll be the Convention and we'll have to do this by picking names out of a hat."
"Vice President," Sam said.
"Right."
"We don't have an incumbent."
"Not unless we feel it's showing political strength to welcome back the guy who defected last fall with open arms, no. Leo wants a shortlist by Wednesday."
Coming up with a list of names in sixty hours was more difficult than it sounded. To begin with, the list of names needed to be electable, left-wing, but not so left-wing that we would lose the moderates, and preferably having served time in the military. We all continued to believe that Jed Bartlet was our real thing, after the MS, after everything, but none of us were dumb, and we knew that having Hoynes on the ticket in '98 had delivered the south, the military, and the moderates, three groups that wouldn't have elected a liberal academic former Governor from New England, particularly one who never served in uniform. On top of that, our names would have to be people who we had a realistic chance of getting to accept the nomination.
Plus, we were trying to do this while prepping for a primary and, you know, doing our actual jobs.
Sam was passing by my office on the Tuesday afternoon for… something that I'm sure neither one of us could remember now, and we both opened our mouths to ask the same question at the same time.
"You getting anywhere with Hoynes's replacement?"
"No."
Sam was sitting on my desk and I was slumped against the doorframe. I had been trying to do the thing with my back flat against the wall that's supposed to relax me – might work, even, if I could ever do it for long enough before someone slammed a door into my face – but had ended up just using the wall to prop me up.
"Are you okay?"
"Tired." I offered him a tiny grin. "I didn't think it would be so hard this time."
"You didn't think the President had multiple sclerosis," he pointed out quietly. "Not your fault. Nobody's fault."
"Not that. We're all doing two jobs, and I'm not saying I regret this decision, because the now thankfully ex-campaign staff were doing a pretty good job of losing this election spectacularly, I'm just saying, you know, there aren't forty-eight hours in a day. Plus," I waved a hand around. "We weren't supposed to have to look for a VP. That was supposed to be one decision we made in the first campaign that we didn't have to make in the second."
"I know."
"Yeah."
"We'll get there."
Sam got up to leave and, as he got to the door, touched my fingers briefly. Our relationship was still so much of a secret then that it was practically classified, and while we had never had any real paranoia about acting the way we had always acted, it wasn't like he could just give me a 'real' hug right there in my office with the door open. So I got miniscule physical contact and an exhausted smile. Sometimes, like then, that was enough.
"We need to figure it out tonight. We're going to be here late."
"So we'll be here late." He shrugged. "Not like we haven't all done it before, too many times to count. We'll figure it out."
And we did. The nine of us, with Chinese takeout, until three in the morning. After four hours, we had two possible names to give to Leo at senior staff five hours later, and we knew which one it would be. Because we knew that one of them would cite alcoholism, drug addiction, and a point blank refusal to leave his West Wing in the hands of, well, me, as reasons for him being unable to be elected Vice President of the United States. Because he forgets that the rest of us remember he overcame those problems, he runs the country, he served in one of the bloodiest, most pointless wars in history and would have died for his country, and we would die for him.
So we took the other name.
A man who had executed his roles in the Situation Room and the Oval Office flawlessly for over three years and counting, who nobody could accuse of being too liberal or non-military, and who we had all the respect in the world for.
And who, coincidentally, would make history when he took the oath of office.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I don't remember the last time I heard applause like that. The State of the Union, maybe, but I doubt it. The state representatives, the Senators and Governors and Congressmen and Congresswomen, they all know Fitz. Not personally and not like we do, but they know that he's a big part of the reason that we're not fightings wars with India, Pakistan, Columbia, Haiti, and Qumar right now. There are members of State who remember him being a big part of the reason, even when he was being forced to do his job by phone, that the Executive Branch and by extension the entire federal government didn't disintegrate into little pieces when the President was shot.
That's something that'll give you a lot of faith in a person's ability to be the second-ranking member of his party, you know?
The applause dies down and the President continues giving the speech, as I walk over to CJ and get her into a corner where we can still see a monitor but won't be overheard by the press.
"Hoynes is dropping out."
"He's what?"
"He isn't doing what we all said he would be doing. It's going to be a two-man…"
"Person," she snaps.
"A two-person race," I correct myself in the interests of not wanting to, you know, die. "Us and Ritchie. Hoynes is through."
"What's he asking for?"
"Nothing." I'm a little surprised when I realise that that's true. "He's giving us his endorsement. Said he wanted to do the right thing. Mostly," I admit, "I think it's that he doesn't want Rob Ritchie to be the President of the United States and he recognises that there's a far greater chance of that happening if he stays in and splits the left. He's a pain in the ass, CJ, always has been, but he's still a Democrat."
"We're releasing it?"
"Nah. Let him. He's doing it himself tomorrow morning."
"Josh…" She eyes me carefully. "You know that you don't owe him anything for this, right? If anything, it's what he should have done a while ago."
"I know. But let him do it himself. Control the news cycle; we tell the press now, that's going to be the story. We've done good, we should get our moment to just know that we did good and not need to worry about what happens next, and if that means he can drop out of the race on his own terms and not have us do it for him, we'll suck it up."
"Yeah."
"It's been a crazy week," she notes.
"Have you been moonlighting at the Department for Sublime Understatement?"
"We haven't had much time to talk."
That gets my attention in a hurry. Usually, when CJ refers to us needing to talk or not having had time to talk, it means I've done something monumentally stupid and I'm going to get loomed over and yelled at. She bites back a laugh at my apparently obvious paranoia.
"I'm not going to shout. Can't, really, not here."
"Good."
"Just… look at this. We made it. We've had possibly the worst first term in the history of the White House…"
"You can say that again," Toby mumbles, as I notice that the staff have started to gravitate over to us as the President enters the final section. "MS."
"Censure," I add.
Donna looks across at me. "Big Tobacco."
"Haiti."
"The DEA agents in Columbia."
"Sierra-Tucson."
"Galileo."
"Mrs Landingham."
"Taiwan."
"Prostitutes."
"Call girls," Sam counters with a look.
"India-Pakistan."
"Mendoza."
"Secret plan to fight inflation."
It goes on. Sam, me, Andy, Donna, Charlie, CJ, and Toby, listing the reasons that the Bartlet White House should by rights have imploded – both metaphorically, and, by the time someone brought up the lighting of a fire in a welded flue, literally as well – a long time ago, while the President's voice swells behind us. Somehow I know that this is going to culminate in a lot of drinking on the plane, when we finally get out of here in the small hours of tomorrow morning. We start to wind down, and eventually, Charlie looks me straight in the eye.
"To say nothing of too many people wanting too many of us dead for too few reasons, but we're all still here."
"And it doesn't go away," I say, holding his gaze.
We were in this position four years ago. Not having won the Presidency but having come further than nine months earlier we could have imagined possible. Last time, we didn't know what we were doing and we certainly didn't know what we were letting ourselves in for. This time, we do. It sounds insane to think that we're ready for another four years of working ninety hours a week, eating on the move, and not seeing home for days at a time. Sounds insane to think that we *want* that. This time last year, I don't think any of us could have said with absolute honesty that we did want it, but tonight, if only for these few hours, it feels like we're going to be given another shot at changing the world.
It's a good feeling.
The speech is coming to an end. I return my eyes to the President, who looks and sounds like we're feeling. That look on his face that says he's going to set the world on fire or die trying; a look that none of us have seen enough of for too long. Something else we need to change. We were kicking the final section around one night six or seven weeks ago, and Toby pulled out his copy of the State of the Union from our second year, set it down next to the preamble to the Constitution, and ten minutes later, we had the final lines.
Lines that are going to make this audience stand up like it's coming from their socks.
"The government is fallible; it's made mistakes and it will continue to make mistakes. But tonight, we leave behind our failures of the past and we set aside our worries of those failures in times to come, and we say that government can be an instrument of good, a place where people come together and where nobody gets left behind. *This* is America, *we* are the people, and we are *going* to form a more perfect union."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hey, look, guys, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. Not entirely, anyway.
Um, we finally have a candidate for Vice President; I wish I could take the credit for it but Josh brought it up in 'Stirred' and I've been fixated on getting him on the ticket ever since. I would like to point out, for the record, that I ditched Hoynes a long, long time before Sorkin did. Speaking of whom: the characters and canon depicted herein are the property of Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme, and I don't give a monkeys who writes it these days. If bits of the Convention speech sounds familiar, that's because one was a line of their *actual* Convention speech and the other was a line from their State of the Union, so I guess they don't belong to me, either... oh, and neither do any of the things I stole from the preamble to the Constitution, but I'm pretty sure that the Founders and Framers didn't have copywrite law.
Thank you to everyone I usually thank for everything I usually thank them for. Rhiannon, in particular, for not yet declaring me insane and throwing away the key.
Chapter 11: Chaos Theory. You know what? I'm not even going to say it. I always jinx it when I do.