Analecta

by: N. Y. Smith

Disclaimer: Not Mine

Category: AU (very), Josh/Donna Romance, Josh POV, Angst,

Spoilers: Through Season Three

Rating: PG-13

Author's Note: Contains references to 9/11/2001. Amy-free universe.

One Picture's Worth a Million Votes

"The thing I remember most about the summer of 2002 is how little I remember about the summer of 2002."

Sam Seaborn

The Real Thing: President Josiah Bartlet, 2010

"The thing I remember most about the summer of 2002 is how little I want to remember about the summer of 2002."

Claudia Jean Cregg

Sister, Sister, 2007

"The thing I remember most about the summer of 2002 is how much I'm unable to forget about the summer of 2002."

Toby Ziegler

Freedom's Voice, 2008

If you're in politics long enough you get to see the really wretched people get their just desserts-including the ones on your own side. Bruno Gianelli and his people had been pulling out all the stops on the campaign and we were still down ten points to our esteemed opponent. We'd done the talk shows, cut ribbons, debated until we were blue in the face and kissed every baby in America to little avail. And then, out of the blue, it happened.

It was a grainy picture, carried two days before the election on the front page of the Conservative Christian newspaper, The Guardian. The photo was of a campaign strategy meeting that had taken place a few weeks prior during a swing through Florida. It was taken from a boat off of a private beach during a rare moment when it was just us-the President and First Lady, the Senior Staff and their wives-Bruno and the Bobbsey Twins were nowhere in sight. We were on the veranda of the ocean-front house discussing-read that arguing-the near-certain dismal outcome of the Florida, and the national, vote. The approaching sunset had bathed us all in gold despite the shade from the awning. In sharp focus were four very, very pregnant women with the Senior Staff in the left slightly fuzzy. The cutline read "Family Values?" and an editorial piece accompanied it.

Obviously authored by Mary Marsh and her minions, it reminded the nation that the President had lied about his illness and his wife of over thirty years had been complicit. It revealed that the Chief of Staff-having left his wife of nearly thirty years--had been frittering away his time in the company of a powerful attorney. Paying no attention to the small detail that it was Jenny who left Leo and that he hadn't worked less than an eighteen hour day since we'd arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the article continued on to expose the wicked truth that the Deputy Chief of Staff had apparently corrupted his assistant and then had, the cad, married her a mere seven months before she gave birth to their one-month-premature child. He had defiled her again, obviously, for she was then pregnant with their second child. The Communications Director had contributed to this debauchery by reconciling with his wife, whose wedding ring he'd never removed, before having their divorce set aside all the while causing her to be in the family way. His Deputy Director had demonstrated his moral bankruptcy by returning to the love of his life before, inconveniently, being nearly killed in a domestic terrorist attack. The resultant delay of their wedding allowed the product of their joy at his survival to become increasingly evident. The most heinous of us all was, of course, the wanton woman who'd fallen in love with, and promised to marry, a man whom God punished for his sins by allowing him to be hacked to death just after filming a Peabody-Award winning report on the Muslim extremists who had instituted a world-wide fusillade of terror.

CJ saw it first, on a copy messengered to her from Mary Marsh. She had been standing in the bullpen when it was delivered to her, talking to Carol, and I remember the way she swayed as she read it. The tears began and her hands flew to her belly while the newspaper fluttered to the floor. Sam had reached her first, almost carrying her back to her office, where she huddled with the women-Carol, Donna, Ginger and the First Lady-until she emerged, livid.

"I hope she rots in Hell," she hissed on her way to the Press Room. Miraculously, not a soul asked her about it even though I know I saw at least twenty copies in the room. Sam, for his part, was already plotting retribution. Toby nodded conspiratorially while I feigned ignorance of the conspiracy.

The photo ran, nationally, the next morning-Election Day. In a rare example of cosmic justice, or Divine Intervention, most of the metropolitan dailies ran the article below the fold on the op-ed page and the picture above the fold on the front page. In the Washington Post, the cutline was missing the question mark and the photo had been sharpened considerably so that you could see the details that Mary Marsh wanted obscured.

On the left side of the group shot Toby sat in a chair at the end of a sofa, intently reading a sheaf of papers he held in one hand while massaging Andy Wyatt's propped-up feet with the other. Andy was on the end of the sofa, leaning away from him to point to something on the paper in my left hand. CJ peered with Leo from behind the couch, one hand on Andy's shoulder and the other resting on the shelf formed by her belly. Almost obscured by her was the First Lady who was massaging CJ's lower back while talking over her shoulder at the President who had slipped an arm around his wife's waist while his other hand rested on my oldest son's curly head as he snuggled on my shoulder. I patted my son's back as one tiny hand wrapped around my now-dangling necktie and the other wrapped around his mother's right index finger. Donna's unshod feet were tangled with mine and her left hand lay gently on the shoulder of Mallory O'Brien-Seaborn while reading the papers Mallory held in her right hand. She sat, Indian-style, on the floor between Donna and Sam, who peered over her shoulder, his right foot rubbing gently against her left knee, his head propped on one arm while the other kneaded his reminder of the Christmas tragedy-a throbbing left temple. It was but an instant frozen in time but one that showed, undeniably, the thread of life that had come to bind us together. It was an image the voters took with them to the polls.

At midnight, after a shocking, come-from-behind performance, our opponent conceded. Down ten points and twelve electoral votes the week before, we'd won the popular vote by less than a million and the electoral vote by two. But it was enough. A flummoxed Bruno Gianelli ordered Joey Lucas to ferret out the explanation, but was totally unprepared for the result. Of the voters sampled-ones who'd reversed their previous decision to vote for our opponent-ninety-nine percent confessed that the picture-not our platform, or our policies-had changed their mind. The American voters looked at that group and decided Josiah Bartlet and his adopted family were the people they wanted in the White House.

But even that news, that we'd won, paled in comparison to the night's other events. At 11:57 p.m., just under the deadline, CJ Cregg gave birth to a son. We, Sam and Mallory and Donna and I heard that report, then watched on the waiting room TV as we found out where we'd spend the next four years raising our children. I say "ours" because Mallory and Sam contributed a daughter on Veteran's Day and Andy and Toby a son on Thanksgiving. For Christmas we all got together in the Mural Room and gave the President a portrait taken by the same guy who'd snapped the "victory" picture (imagine his surprise when the Deputy Chief of Staff summoned him to the White House). It joined his family photographs on his desk in the Oval Office, and then at the farm at Manchester, until his death.

Chapters - Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

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