"CJ, thanks so much for being here today," Gordon told her. "It's been quite a few years since the last time you were with us here on the show. In fact, I think it was the last time you were hear promoting a National Book Award Winner: six years ago with Mark Goldstein's book High Flight."

"The pleasure to be back here with you is all mine," CJ told Gordon tactfully. In truth, no one liked being on Gordon's show, talking pseudo-politics.

"Although Goldstein's book has faded from the public eye over the past few years, it's experiencing a resurgence in popularity, since Congresswoman Alexandra McCosham announced her campaign for the presidency. Why do you think that is?"

"His book has always been a fairly steady seller, and a special edition was published to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of President Bartlet leaving office, not long before Alex made her announcement. Noah Lyman's recent book Do Not Go Gentle, which is sort of a companion piece to High Flight, has added more to the popularity of Mark's book than Alex's candidacy did."

"And is the Legacy that Goldstein's book spoke of still alive and strong or now that President Bartlet has been dead for nearly a dozen years, has his influence waned?"

At this question, CJ abandoned all of her sense of proper decorum in front of the cameras; she threw back her head and laughed, deep rolling chuckles that started at the very bottom of her feet. "President Bartlet's influence is every bit as strong now as it once was. All you have to do is look around! Alex McCosham, Mark Goldstein, Noah Lyman: all members of the Legacy. Ted Keegan in Congress. Zoey Young, recently appointed to the bench by a Republican president. The list doesn't stop; it just keeps growing."


Jack stole silently out of Nick's bedroom, pulling the door shut behind him. The three-year-old had certainly developed a mind of his own and it was next to impossible to get him to stay down for an afternoon nap. But with the gathering that was planned for that night, a nap was essential; no one would be going to bed early.

"Finally got him to sleep?" CJ asked softly, passing him in the hall on the way back from the guest room that she and Toby had claimed as their own for the next few weeks. She was carrying a stack of yellow legal pads.

Jack nodded, checking his watch as the two headed together toward the stairs. "Yeah. He'll be dead to the world at least until the girls get home from school," he answered. "Is Alex home yet?"

CJ shrugged. "How am I supposed to know? Toby's had me upstairs digging through his file boxes since you decided that it was time for Nick's nap," she complained. "I'm not quite sure that he couldn't have gone up himself since he was the one who decided to dispense with a filing system that normal people would recognize and simply shove things into whichever box happened to be closest."

Jack laughed. He was often that way himself, much to the annoyance of every assistant that he had ever had. But he still had nothing on Josh. If Josh managed to find an assistant who would put up with him for more than three days, Donna tried to hold onto them any way she could; she knew firsthand just how difficult he was to work for.

"You may laugh now," CJ warned him, "but remember that revenge is a dish best served cold."

"Or maybe covered in chocolate?" Jack quipped, jumping the last few stairs to get out of CJ's range.

He was temporarily saved from CJ's wrath by Toby's strident bellow. "Did you find those damn lists yet?"

"Be quiet," she directed Toby, hurrying toward the dining room and mentally vowing to make Sam pay. "Or I'm sure that Jack will make you sing Nick back to sleep."

"You sing?" Toby questioned, looking at Jack and shaking his head sadly. "Man, have you ever gone domestic on us."

"I don't sing," Jack protested, crossing his arms firmly across his chest as he surveyed the masses of paper Toby had arranged on the table.

"Next thing you know, you'll have the little, pink, frilly apron tied around your waist," Toby observed wryly. "And you'll be baking girly cookies with matching frosting."

"This coming from the same guy that asked Becky if he could borrow her Sugar Plum Barbie?" Jack mused. "Or was it Abby's Sleeping Beauty Barbie?"

"Well, you know that was only because you were already using the…"

"Are you absolutely sure that you want to finish that thought?" CJ interjected, cutting her husband off. She stood near the table, her hands firmly on his hips.

"You two do realize that conversations like these are exactly what we're going to be fighting against trying to get the nomination, right?" Alex broke in, her stance mirroring CJ's.

"I guess that you heard the whole conversation?"

"Enough of it," she replied with a sigh. Normally, she would have loved to hassle the two men for the exchange, even the precious little that she had actually overheard, but she was serious. Those were the attitudes that they were going to be coming up against. Not only that, but they were running short on time. They'd had to reschedule this meeting a dozen times already, and now they were facing the start of a campaign without ever having looked at who they wanted to work on it.

"Shall we get started?" Alex asked, evaluating the mess that had been made of her dining room and mentally calculating how long it would take to make the room presentable for dinner.

Toby looked positively gleeful at the suggestion that they start. "Ideally, Josh should be here," Toby started, gesturing for them all to take seats, "but someone has to make sure the government continues to function."

"I think we can skip the introduction," CJ interrupted.

"The only other announcement we're expecting is Straithairn's," Toby began again, this time getting right to the heart of the matter. "But as Holmes proved, we can't predict everyone who wants in on this thing. People have been declaring right on the heels of one another; it's only been a week and a half since Lazlow started the ball rolling. We've got to get our campaign moving, quickly."

"How do you figure this race is going to play out?" Alex questioned, grasping a pen and flipping to a few blank pages at the back of one of the many legal pads. She started scribbling her own notes, not even waiting for anyone to answer her.

"What do you know about the other candidates?" Toby inquired.

"More about some than others," Alex admitted. "And probably not as much as I should about any. But that's why I keep you guys around," she teased.

Toby launched right into a summary of the playing field. "Andrew Milchan doesn't need to build the name recognition or grassroots organization in Iowa; he's still got those from when he was governor. That'll help deaden some of the impact of Iowa, but an unexpectedly strong showing from anyone else will give their campaign a jumpstart."

Alex nodded and allowed him to continue without interruption. "Oliver Feldman will probably take New Hampshire, more as a consequence of being from there than from having a national support base. The same things will hold for New Hampshire as for Iowa; losing won't be as big of a deal, but we're still going to need a strong finish."

"You don't have any reason to think that those victories are going to translate into national success?" Jack questioned.

"There's no telling for sure," Toby grudgingly conceded. "But I don't think that they have the national appeal they're going to need. Robert Sandell and Edwin Straithairn have much broader support bases already. Sandell can call on his work with the African-American lobby groups and Straithairn's been actively exploring this for so long that he's already unofficially amassed some of the support that he'll need. Those are the two that we're going to have to watch for."

"You're dismissing Holmes and Lazlow out of hand?"

"Lazlow's a fool," Toby declared vehemently. "He's too conservative for half of the Republicans. Quite frankly, I'm astounded that he's even managed to get elected to the Senate as many times as he has."

"I'd never heard of Steven Holmes until he had his press conference," Alex confessed. "He's the governor of Utah, right?"

Toby nodded, deliberately selecting a pad of paper from one of the stacks. "The candidates we can't do anything about," he declared, "but we have got to start assembling our campaign team. We're still aiming to pre-empt Straithairn's announcement, but you can't really start campaigning until we've at least started putting your people together."

Alex looked at the table with its piles of yellow pads and lists.


"I suppose that you have a few suggestions?"


"Who doesn't?" Josh replied with a grin. "But that doesn't necessarily mean that you should take them."

"But I should take yours?" Donna quipped, holding her cards closer to her chest so that Josh couldn't peer at them. "This in spite of the fact that you've lost the most money of any of us?"

He shrugged. "Apparently I've got a bad poker face."

"Your bad poker face is the whole reason that I got into this," Sam retorted, tossing a few more bills into the pot, matching Toby's bet.

"All I did was drag you away from a dead-end job at that law firm," Josh commented.

"And by dead-end, you mean a partnership at the second biggest law firm in New York," Sam noted.

"Come on," CJ teased, "you know that you wouldn't have had it any other way."

Sam pretended to think about it, but he knew the answer. "Would I give up having worked for a boss that never seemed to be satisfied with anything that I wrote?" he mused, looking up at Toby.

"How about the weeks where we slept at work more often than we slept in our own beds?" CJ chimed in.

"Or the assistants that refused to get you coffee?" Donna added, grinning over at Josh.

"Having to keep spare clothes in the office because we didn't know when we'd get the chance to go home and change."

"Spending weeks drafting a speech only to have to rewrite it in the last four hours."

"Bad pay."

"Horrible hours."

"Missed holidays."

"Cantankerous senators."

"Recalcitrant congressmen."

"I wouldn't trade a thing," Sam decided, a grin splitting his face. For a second, he looked just as young as he had the day Jed had taken his first oath of office, despite the white hair sprinkled liberally through the black.