Disclaimer: I own neither the characters nor the universe of The West Wing, and make no such claim upon them. I'm simply having some fun here.

Get It Together

July 30, 2006

It had been a long week.

Just over a week after the end of the Democratic National Convention, Josh Lyman was frustrated. The White House was not only not cooperating with the Santos/McGarry campaign, but seemed to be trying to actively sabotage it. Leo McGarry was struggling as a candidate. Getting a coherent campaign narrative was proving to be far more difficult than Josh expected. He was having problems with personnel – Josh was starting to figure out who on the campaign was effective, who needed guidance, who was dead weight. Finding qualified staffers was difficult – and finding qualified staffers he could actually hire was even more difficult. If only...

Josh sighed, ran his hand through his unruly hair, and refocused. No time to thing about that. California. Think about California.

He sat at his desk at Santos/McGarry headquarters, at half past midnight, looking over the latest polling data from the Golden State. It had been instrumental for Matthew Santos in the primaries, and if Joey Lucas' numbers were right (which they usually were) the race in California was far closer than Josh would have expected. The state's demographics and political culture should have made it a naturally Democratic state, and Josiah Bartlet had easily won the state in both of his elections, but the Republican Party's predilection for nominating Californians gave them the state in both of Owen Lassiter's elections, and looked to put it in Arnold Vinick's column in November. Josh couldn't decide whether to gamble and throw campaign money and time into California, or to write it off and concentrate on states like Illinois and Michigan.

Native-son factor versus fifty-five electoral votes...

"Hell of a week, huh, kid?"

Josh looked up to see Leo McGarry in the doorway of his office.

"Hey. You're here late."

"Says the man burning the midnight oil on a Saturday night," Leo said. "I got back from Santa Fe about an hour ago. Thought I'd stop in before I went home."

"How'd it go?"

"Let's just say that running for office is very different from being in your position. It'll get better."

Josh sighed. He knew that having Leo as the Vice Presidential candidate wouldn't be easy at first – for either Leo or for the campaign. His past with addiction had come up immediately, but in a way that was a good thing – everything with Leo was a matter of public record, and if it came up now, right at the beginning, it would be less of an issue later on. And at least it was public, thank God, and there wouldn't be any October Surprises the Republicans had ready to spring on the electorate. Not about Leo, at least.

But it wasn't easy going for anyone. Leo had never run for elected office, and Josh knew that for all his knowledge and political savvy, it was another thing entirely for Leo to be out there in front of the cameras. He was stumbling badly out of the gate, although he had improved his performance, even in the space of a week. Josh knew Leo would improve further. He was Leo McGarry after all.

"Better you than me, Leo," Josh said.

Leo laughed. "I bet you could do this if you put your mind to it. If I can, you can. Having Annabeth to guide me helps a lot."

"She's working out?"

"Yeah. We're lucky to have her. It's all about getting the right people," Leo said, pulling up a chair in front of Josh's desk and sitting down. "Speaking of which, did I see Lou Thornton's name on the office next door?"

"The Congressman hired her yesterday. We need her, Leo. We need a media strategist."

"I thought you didn't like her. After that thing where Jenkins beat your guy Alcott."

"She has a..."

Leo interrupted. "And where Janice Martell beat Philip Brady."

"Despite that..."

"That one was two to one, wasn't it?"

Josh put his face in his hands. "Leo! That's... look. We need her. We need someone to craft a message, and the only people in her league are Toby and Mandy."

"You ever think of getting her on board?"

"Who, Mandy?" Josh shuddered involuntarily. "No. Mandy doesn't play well with others. Lou Thornton just doesn't play nice with me."

"How's she going to work for you, then?"

Josh retrieved a bottle of club soda from his mini-fridge, and poured he and Leo each a glass. "She made it a condition of her employment that she reports directly to the Congressman. Her strategies, her ideas, her hires... they don't go through me at all."

"Josh," Leo said in a slightly annoyed tone, "you can't let people run roughshod over you. You're the campaign manager. You have to be in charge."

There was a bitter note in Josh's laugh. "Tell that to the Congressman. He makes his own decisions, sometimes without consulting me. He's his own man, Leo. It's part of the reason he's my guy."

"That's gotta be a pain at times."

The bitterness was slightly more pronounced this time. "Yeah. Yeah it is. But better him than a human sock puppet like Bingo Bob. I'd ten times rather have a candidate with ideas and an independent streak than a hollow shell of a candidate like that. But it's not like you and the President, Leo. The Congressman and I are still getting to know each other."

"He wouldn't have come this far without you, Josh. He wouldn't have been anywhere at all without you."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. And at least Lou's smart and talented. God forbid he gave that kind of leeway to some idiot. I can work with Lou, even if we're never going to sing 'Kumbaya' together."

Leo laughed. "Any other hires I should know about?"

"I'm still working on it. I got Edie Ortega as my deputy."

"Yeah, I know. She was good over at the Minority Leader's office. Helped us out with the Clean Air and Water Act."

"She thinks we can get Lester Monroe."

"I thought he was with CBS these days?" Leo asked.

"Apparently he misses the lifestyle."

"God knows why," Leo laughed. "He was damn good with Hoynes eight years ago."

"Yeah. He didn't seem to hate me after I left, so hopefully Edie can get him."

"That's great." Leo took a long drink of the club soda, and waited a minute before continuing. "I heard Donna was here."

Josh bristled. "Leo..."

"I assume it wasn't just to say hello."

"Leo, I don't really want to..."

"And I haven't seen her out there, so I'm guessing you told her no."

Josh ran his hand through his hair, frustrated. "Yes. I mean, I told her no."

Leo shook his head. "You can't make things personal."

"It wasn't personal. It was political."

"Josh..."

"For God's sake, Leo, do you think I wouldn't hire someone the campaign could use for personal reasons?"

Leo considered this. "No. I don't think you would hire someone unless you thought you were doing the right thing politically."

"Thank you."

"Even though you're completely wrong about it not being personal."

"Leo! She spent months... months!... trashing the Congressman, belittling him, making personal attacks, claiming he was unqualified."

"I seem to recall you doing the same to the Vice President, Josh."

"Yes I did," Josh said, exasperated. "But two things, Leo. One, I was right. Bingo Bob is all hat, all boots, no brains. And Two: if Russell had won, I wouldn't have been knocking on Will Bailey's door four days after the convention asking for a job as his deputy!"

"Deputy? That's what she asked for?" Leo said.

"Yeah. I know."

"That takes..."

"Chutzpah?" Josh interrupted.

"Yeah. Makes sense, though. She did great on the campaign."

"She was amazing," Josh said, almost reverently.

"She's smart... she's got a Ph.D at Josh Lyman University. Why can't you hire her?"

"Because of what she said, Leo!"

Leo sighed, exasperated. "It was the primaries."

"It doesn't matter. She trashed our candidate, Leo. She attacked him. Personal attacks Leo."

"That's the job, Josh. It's the game."

Josh leaned back. "Yeah. It's the game. And one of the rules of the game is that when you trash somebody, they might not hire you. One of the rules is that things you say have consequences. At the beginning of the campaign, Will Bailey told me not to go negative, or they wouldn't be able to hire me when Russell won. It's not a surprise, Leo, and Donna damn well knew that, too. They went negative first."

"So she went negative. So what?"

"Come on, Leo. Would you have hired Hoynes' spokesman back in '98, four days after the convention? Would you have made him your deputy after what Hoynes' people said about the President during the campaign? Calling him a lightweight, calling him an egghead who should stick to economics lectures, calling him a left-wing, out-of-touch New England elitist who didn't know a damn thing about the needs or wants of real Americans?"

Leo didn't hesitate. "No, I wouldn't have."

"Exactly. Can you imagine what the Republicans would say? They'd use her sound bites against us, make us look like idiots for having her on the team, and make Democrats look like hypocrites," Josh said, standing and pacing about the room.

"We could spin it. What she said? It's the game, Josh."

"Yeah, I know. It's the game. You know it. I know it. She knows it. Will knows it. Sheila Brooks and Vinick's spin machine know it. Every damn operative, commentator, and journalist from here to Seattle knows it, but it doesn't change the game Leo, and it doesn't change the way it's played! You don't trash the other guy, and then expect him to hire you!" Josh stopped and sighed. "We could spin it, I know. We could spend precious time and resources defending her, justifying hiring her, taking the campaign off-message for who knows how long. Or, we could not hire her and not have to do any of it!"

Leo shook his head. "I think you're overestimating things, Josh. More likely, the Republicans wouldn't notice or care. The public probably wouldn't."

"I'm not going to gamble the campaign over 'likely' and 'probably', Leo, not..."

"Gamble the campaign? You think hiring Donna Moss would gamble the campaign? Seriously, Josh..."

Josh ran his fingers through his hair. "Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. But why risk it?"

"Because she's good? Because she knows her stuff?"

"It doesn't make up for half a year of shilling for God-damned Bingo Bob! I got new people out there who believe in Matt Santos. I got people out there who've been with us for months, since you could fit the whole campaign into a station wagon, who believe in Matt Santos. I'm supposed to ask them to trust someone who spent six months telling the country she thought Matt Santos was a worse choice for president than Bob Russell? How would they do that, Leo? How would they trust her if I put her in the kind of position she's earned? She deserves? A position where she'd be giving orders to people who never thought Bingo Bob should be within a hundred miles of the Oval Office?"

"They'll trust her when they see that you trust her, Josh," Leo said softly.

Josh said nothing.

"You do trust her, don't you?" Leo asked. "Josh?"

Josh ran his hands through his hair.

"How do I know she's not going to just leave me before we're done?" Josh asked.

"Leave you?"

Josh sighed. "I mean the campaign."

Leo shook his head. "Look. I don't know exactly what happened with you two – you don't talk about it, I haven't really run into Donna since then, and all I know is what I've heard from others, but from what I can see, she left one job that was winding down in a year and tried to help get a decent man elected President."

"Decent? Bingo Bob is an unqualified..."

"And you did the same thing."

"You and the President told me to!" Josh said, exasperated.

"Yes we did. But it's still the same thing. Now, you made a better choice, thank God for that. But her leaving her job shouldn't make a difference in whether you trust her or not, not after all you've been through, and all you've done for each other. You know you work well together."

"Yeah, but..."

"Don't overlook the personal component, Josh. I've learned over the years how important that is. It's not everything - you don't want to bring someone on unless they're the best - but it's why the President and I worked so well together, why you brought Sam on, why Toby hired CJ, why you brought Donna into the White House in the first place. Because you know them, and you trust them."

"So you think my not hiring Donna was personal, but I should hire her because it's personal?"

Leo nodded.

"So whatever I do, it's personal!"

Leo as if Josh was a particular dim child. "With Donna, Josh, it's always personal for you. Either way, what you do or don't do is up to you. You're the campaign manager. You made some excellent points for why you thought you couldn't hire her, but I think it won't be the scandal you think it is. But you need to be comfortable with your decision."

"Yeah," said Josh, a contemplative look on his face.

Leo looked appraisingly at Josh. "You never said whether you still trust her. After the last eight years, I can't imagine why you wouldn't."

"It's not... it's not that I don't trust her politically. I just don't know if I could... if we could ever work together like we used to. I trusted her with my life, Leo, but the way she left... she didn't even give me a letter of resignation! She just got mad and quit!"

"And you were completely innocent in this?" Leo asked skeptically.

"Well, maybe not completely, but..."

"Josh, I've never known quite what was going on with you two. You've been through hell together, over and over, and there have been times I thought you and she would... well, anyway. Remember that Christmas I asked you to help get the Church of the Nativity open?"

"I do," Josh said. The truth was that night had never been far from his mind for years, but this year he had tried not to dwell on it, just like he tried not to think of so many other nights and conversations.

"I told you to get it together, then. You really need to get it together now. The Congressman, the Party, all of us, we're all counting on you. Whatever you decide, make the decision and move on." Leo's voice took on a more fatherly tone. "But make sure you talk with her, whatever you do."

"She's the one who quit, Leo. She stopped talking to me."

"So what? Step up. It's too easy to just not talk, to not fix things, to just focus on work. Then one day you wake up and you don't know each other at all any more. It happened to me. Don't let it happen to you."

"Leo, we're not... it's not like you and Jenny," Josh said, almost sadly.

"Are you sure? Look at it this way – she tried to come back. She opened the door."

"I told her I missed her every day, and she said nothing. It meant nothing to her," Josh said, trying to keep the despair from his voice.

Leo had his 'are you stupid?' expression as he spoke. "Somehow I doubt that. Hire her, don't hire her, talk to her, don't talk to her. It's up to you, Josh, but I can't see how not hiring her and not talking to her will make you any happier. Or her. We need you in the game, Josh, not brooding or wallowing. Now go home," he said, clapping Josh on the shoulder as her turned and left the room.

As Josh sat there in the silence of the night, he thought about what Leo had said. He still didn't think he could hire Donna, not with her catalogue of quotes against Santos. He also didn't know if he could talk to Donna and have a real conversation with her. Not after the interview earlier in the week. Not after half a year of awkwardness. Not after her leaving him, leaving a hole in his life, a hole in his heart. Maybe not talking with her wouldn't making him happier. But if he reached out to her, and things continued the way they had been, he would feel much, much worse. And he didn't know whether he could take feeling any worse than he already did.

He got up, shut off the lights, and left headquarters. As he walked to his car, he tried to decide whether to call her or not. Whether to risk it. It was too late tonight, but maybe he'd call her tomorrow. Maybe he'd talk about putting her on the campaign, in a low-profile position to start with. Maybe he'd see if they could get back some of what they used to have.

Maybe he would be brave enough to reach out.

Maybe.