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eloriekam
"Turn on the television."
"Sam?"
"Turn on the damn TV, Josh!"
He reached over and hit the remote, switching it to C-SPAN.
"The hell?"
"It wasn't supposed to be like this." There was a little static on the phone line, but Sam sounded both pissed off and disappointed.
"No kidding." A long sigh on the other end of the phone line. "When did you find out about this?"
"When Carol came into my office two minutes ago and turned my TV on."
"He didn't consult anyone in Congress at all?" Josh almost screeched.
"Nope."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing, for now. I can find out who was consulted, if anyone, but I don't think it'll do much good. Technically, it's a police action, which makes the Senate and the House pretty helpless."
"I still have some contacts in the House-" Josh started.
He could practically hear the gentle smile. "So do I, Josh."
"Sam, seriously, this is the biggest thing since... I don't even know. Sending troops into five different countries? That's on about the same level as suddenly invading England."
"Well, no, not exactly, because England doesn't have oil reserves," Sam returned. "They also don't have the world's highest concentrations of terrorist cells."
"Is there any way to get you on an intelligence committee in the next, you know, two days?"
"Not really," Sam snorted. "Listen, I think Mallory and perhaps half the Democratic Women's Caucus is on line two, Josh. I've gotta go."
"Yeah." Josh slowly put the phone down, then rotated through the channels. Retaliation was almost certain. Higher security around the entire DC area. More guards. More time. More threats... and the possibility that he or one of his friends would open a package, step onto a bus, into a restaurant, walk along the street, and be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Caught by a change in coverage, he stopped and turned up the volume.
"-there may be some early hope that things will change for those not well off in these countries, but according to the plan devised by the newly sworn-in President Haffley and his senior advisers, all countries will simply go under stricter rule with curfews and the like, with the previously established governments free to go about their usual business..."
"Hi," Donna suddenly said from behind him. Josh jumped a little and then turned.
"Hey," he replied softly. "You're home early."
"Yeah, they sent all of us home early today to get some rest. We'll be working long days for the next week," she answered quietly, eyes a little red.
"You doing okay?"
"It's not right, Josh!"
"Yeah, I know." He turned back to the screen, watching tanks roll in, people lining up...
Donna reached down and turned the TV off. "This goes against everything," she declared, voice shaking.
"Come here." Josh took her hand and pulled her around to sit in his lap. "It's going to be okay."
"Don't say that." She paused and took a breath. "I always hoped that if we ever invaded those countries, and yes, I know it's being called a police action, that we'd be doing it to help them out, to establish democracy or to say that women in all countries should have certain basic rights. But this..."
"Foreign relations have been deteriorating for the last six years," he reminded. "The bombing in Israel, the killing of Shareef... and the way the impending energy crisis has been ignored. From how fast and large this action is, I'd say we've got even less oil than I thought we did."
"Josh..."
"Donna, we don't have a plan for wartime," he said abruptly.
"It might not last that long..." she started hesitantly. He shook his head.
"No. This is gonna last a while. I know it's March of 2015 and the convention's not for another 40 months, but we don't have anything for this."
"You'll figure something out."
"Yeah." He leaned back and sighed. Donna hit him in the shoulder. "Ow! What the hell was that for?"
"Focusing on one issue," she retorted.
"Yeah, I'm sorry." He rubbed a hand across his forehead. "Sam and Al are teenagers."
"Yes," she replied.
"You know what we're going to be talking about at dinner tonight?"
"Sam and Al's view on the just-initiated police action, and everything else political under the sun."
"They're not old enough to vote."
"Josh, people waiting until they're old enough to vote before they take an interest in politics is one of the problems with this country."
"Okay."
"How goes it?" Jed asked, pulling him into a hug.
Josh gave him a small smile in return. "It could be worse."
"Pessimist. You have to leave that at the door, you know."
"Yeah." Josh stepped in, Sam right after him, and pulled off his coat. "I was right," he announced smugly.
Donna glanced over from where she was helping Josiah take off his boots. "Shut up." Sam smirked, and she glowered at him. "Shut up!"
"Donna's going to be right in the end, you know," Bartlet admonished the pair before him. "There may no longer be tens of thousands of troops over there, but the consequences will last for decades. I don't know what he was thinking."
"He was thinking we needed more oil and he didn't want to pay attention to the energy reform bill," Josh answered, frustrated. "But hopefully nothing else really weird will happen in the next couple of years."
"What're the chances of that?" Sam grumbled.
"About the same as the chances of you sleeping anywhere but your office if you don't move over right now," Mallory announced from behind him. Sam jumped forward, almost tripping on the rug. "Also, I'll need your solemn word that you had nothing to do with the lack of resolution coming out of the foreign relations committee, Samuel. Or with the funding going to these countries..."
"Whoa, whoa." Sam held up his hands. "You know I'd never do such a thing, and would you like help with the kids?" Mal sighed, deflating just a little bit.
"I'm sorry, Sam. It's just that it would be nice if once in a while this country actually practiced what it preached. Violence against women has gone up in those countries in the last nine months, did you know that? And the way too many people are being forced to live is-" She stopped as Sam gently cupped her face with one hand and kissed her.
"I do know," he said gently, hand running back to her ear, then her hair, and down to her back. "I do know, Mallory."
"Sorry," she replied, her own hand reaching up to trace the imperfect outline of Sam's right ear. She sighed deeply. "It's really ticking me off."
"I can tell."
"Hey, Mal." Donna stood. "Need any help with anything?"
"No, thanks. Actually, I'll need help with a great deal of things."
"Right." Donna nodded calmly. "Just let me know."
"I detect an ambush," Jed contributed.
"Me too," Josh added. Donna turned a smile on him.
"I'm glad our years of marriage have improved your sense of self-preservation in these matters."
"Be careful," the former President put in.
"Yeah," Josh answered, eyeing his wife.
"We're going to be very busy," Donna answered.
"It's so quiet in here," Abbey noted as she came into the room. "Jed, sit down before you fall down; you know you shouldn't be standing up so much. Did you forget to bring all of the children with you?"
"For reasons not quite clear to me, Toby volunteered to drive the four oldest ones up," Josh answered. "And the rest of them are... somewhere around here. Donna, we brought Noah and Joann, right?"
"Snowmen," she answered calmly.
"There's snow?"
"Were you looking at anything on the way here?"
"I was thinking." Donna just rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"They'll be here soon, Abbey," she said with a laugh.
"And every year, my house gets turned into a zoo," Jed pretended to mourn. "Twelve kids, from two to thirteen years. We must be insane, Abigail."
"It took you until the ninth one of these things to figure that out?"
"Yeah."
"Congress looks good on you."
Charlie turned. "Thanks. Some people have been saying I look good on it, but..."
"What took you so long?" Josh flopped down on the couch and waved an arm at the other man.
"There were some cases I needed to finish in the other years, and also there wasn't an opening. I would have been running against the incumbent of my own party, unless I wanted to establish residency in another district, and we weren't too keen on that."
"Miss the law firm?"
"Sometimes. Just like I miss staying up until 1 am listening to the history of Russian opera."
Josh laughed. "Seriously, you don't miss it at all?"
"I do, a little. The firm was old and respected, enough so to give me a good reputation without being so set in their ways that I couldn't take on some interesting clients."
"Yeah. I personally would like to thank you for the Robertson case."
"People need to take responsibility," Charlie responded. "I'm just glad that one of those people had the courage to come forward, or who knows how much pollution would be spread across the state by now?"
"Probably too much." They sat in silence for a little while. "You know, you're only a little bit younger than I was when Leo told me to go to Nashua." Charlie glanced over at him with his 'what was the point of that?' expression on. "It just now occurred to me, that's all. Do you know that you've spent almost half your life in something politically related, Charlie?"
"Yep." He sighed and leaned back. "The only real problem I have with Congress so far is that it means I can't really do anything related to Galileo."
"Well, in some ways there's not as much to do as there was when we started it eight years ago, you know."
"And in some ways there's more. The clock is going to start running out on the health care bill, and in some areas the changes to education have been so gradual as to be nearly nonexistent. And while I don't in any way dispute the validity of those issues, Josh, there are a whole lot more out there where those came from."
"What would you pick next?"
Charlie paused in thought. "Treatment versus enforcement. Immigration. Crime. Energy. Environment."
"That's five things, Charlie."
"Yeah, so?"
"Galileo's influence is a little, you know, smaller than that."
"Josh, what do you think would happen if we were to somehow find another ten people as crazy as we are in some other states and start up mini-Galileos?"
"I think it would turn out fantastic in the long run, and that in the short term, people would feel pretty yanked around. Wait a second."
"Yeah."
"No."
"Yeah."
"Zoey know about this?"
"Does Zoey know about this?" Charlie repeated. "Josh, she was the one who came up with the idea. She's found movers and shakers on both sides of the aisle and then some, she's told them how to structure it, and she's made sure they really mean it. And she's taught them how to say it right. Does she know about it? Josh, my wife is ready and willing to kick the world's ass, and the only reason she's only kicking half of it right now is that she's just one woman."
"She got all the Bartlet genes?"
"Yeah, I think they mutated or something. Even Jed was a little surprised by this."
"Yeah, Leo's been giving Mallory some pretty weird looks too."
"What's she on?"
"Women's issues, women's leadership, international human rights and treatment of women, wildlife preservation, and AIDS."
"I never would have thought that list wouldn't include education."
"Education's woven into all of them, but Galileo's done a lot of what Mallory would have gone after."
"Wildlife preservation?" Charlie asked after a moment.
"Ties into the environment thing, and also some of those animals are pretty damn cute. She likes the whole picture."
"Wow." He shook his head and sat still for a moment. "Did you ever think you'd be doing this?" he asked Josh.
"Which part of this?"
"Twenty years ago, before the 1998 election was even gearing up, did you ever think, in your wildest dreams, that you would still be doing something as idealistic as making sure everyone in this country can read, count, and construct a sentence?"
Josh looked at him sideways. "No," he answered thoughtfully. "I couldn't have predicted this might happen until a couple of very strange things happened."
"Yeah."
"You gonna help with the thing?" he asked Charlie after a minute.
"Sam's first... what are we calling it?"
"The thing. Or perhaps a bagel."
"You better be bringing lots of backup, or the Sisterhood will be running this before it's even started," Charlie suggested.
"As long as we get around to the stuff we want to get around to, that's fine," Josh shrugged.
"Josh, you could end up with Donna, Mallory, Zoey, Andi, Sam, Al, and possibly Claudia running a Presidential campaign."
"As long as they know what they're doing," he shrugged again.
"You feeling all right?"
"Yeah. I feel about your age, Charlie. This is going to be the greatest thing in American politics in over sixty years." Josh stood up. "Let's go."
"All right."
"Did you get everything?" Toby asked as soon as they came through the door.
Huck put one hand to the side of his head in a gesture almost identical to his father's. "Did we get everything?" He turned to his companions. "Did we get everything, you guys?"
"I think the stores all had one of each item left," Claudia replied, shifting the bag from one hand to the other and turning to her cousins in spirit.
"No, we cleared one of the stores all the way out. Did you see the look the clerk gave us?" Al answered, flipping her hair back as she chuckled.
"Yes, every store with office supplies in a fifteen-mile radius has almost no office supplies left, except I think some staples... also glue guns..." Sam picked up the thread with a smirk.
Toby rocked back and forth a little bit as he regarded them briefly before turning his gaze to the supervising adult. "Are they mocking me?" he asked quietly.
Margaret looked at the four children one by one before she turned back to Toby. "Well... yes. I think they are."
"Huh."
"I told them you mocked me while we were in the White House."
"And that was the incentive?" Toby inquired.
"No, I think the incentive was that you asked them if they got everything when they very clearly did."
"Imagine that." Toby turned back to the kids. "Okay, you clearly got what I asked you to get, and I... appreciate that."
"You want us to stop mocking you?" Claudia asked.
He aimed a finger at her. "That would be good."
"Can we, you know, come in and put all this stuff down?" Sam wanted to know. "I'm carrying all the notebooks ever produced in the history of the universe."
"Hyperbole," Toby accused, pointing at her. "I will not tolerate hyperbole."
"Sorry, Uncle Toby," she giggled, coming in and setting the bags down. "But there really are a lot."
"Did anyone ask you what you were doing?" Josh asked, coming into the room.
Al and Huck moaned in unison, hands over their faces.
"What happened?" Donna demanded, stepping off the stairs. "Are you guys okay?"
"What's going on?" Josh questioned. The two peeked at him from behind their hands, then shook their heads and moaned softly again.
"I think there may have been a complication they didn't tell me about," Margaret offered, turning back to them.
Sam came in. "Did they get everything?"
"Yes!" Toby almost shouted.
"Okay. What's wrong, then?"
Sam and Claudia started giggling.
"Okay, what's the joke?"
Al and Huck deposited their own bags before they answered Donna. "We kept getting complimented on our dedication to school."
"One cashier thought we were doing a senior extra credit project," Huck gasped out through his own laughter. "I think that was Al, though."
"Yeah, I'm older than you. But it was still funny."
"So our cover isn't blown?" Josh pleaded.
"No, Uncle Josh, we didn't reveal our secret identity," Sam retorted before collapsing into giggles again.
He slowly rotated to his best friend. "How do they know about that?"
Sam quirked one eyebrow at Josh. "They've helped out with my campaigns, Josh; they know about Laurie."
"And you told them about the conversation in my office?"
"As a lead-in to never doing anything stupid without getting the approval of the Press Secretary first, yes, I did, Josh."
"We've memorized the secret plan to fight inflation," Al mock-threatened with a grin. Josh threw up his hands.
"Besieged. I'm besieged. Let's get started."
"All right." Al stepped forward to pick up one of the bags again.
"I've got it," Donna volunteered, stepping forward and shooting Margaret a quick look.
"What are we doing?" Huck queried.
Sam moved forward. "You're not too old to be bribed with ice cream, are you?"
"No..." his namesake sighed, following him and rolling her eyes at her companions.
"Uncle Sam..." Claudia said despairingly several minutes later, plunging her spoon into the mound of chunky fudge before her. "We're not helping?"
"No." He licked off the last spoon and placed it in the sink.
"I thought we already argued about this," Al tried. "No, wait... that was with Uncle Josh and Uncle Toby."
"Argued about what?"
"Being involved with politics," Sam answered, chin on her fist. "You know what Uncle Toby and Aunt Carol called us? Game day players."
"And Uncle Toby said that he was waiting to see if it was for real, or just because we didn't know what couldn't be done yet," Al continued. "We're fourteen; do you think we don't know how ridiculous this could look, Uncle Sam?"
"Guys..." he sighed. "This is the White House we're looking at; a Presidential campaign that's going to address some incredibly tough issues and has the potential to contain more nasty ads than have been in all my previous campaigns combined. Putting you in the line of fire wouldn't be fair to you or to us, because we'd be too busy protecting you from the wackos out there."
"The same way Mom kept Huck and I away from her VP campaign?" Claudia asked.
"She didn't."
"That's exactly my point, Uncle Sam."
"And see how mouthy it made you?"
"My parents are Andrea Wyatt and Toby Ziegler. I think I was going to be mouthy anyway," she replied with a smile.
"Okay, that's a fair point."
"And?" Sam prompted.
"The four of you know a lot about politics, a lot about strategy, about the players and issues," he said softly, leaning on a counter. "That's why we're counting on you to pick up where we leave off. And it's why we don't want you burned out by an arduous Presidential campaign."
"Uncle Sam..." Al said, placing her head in her hands. "We survived knowing that we were born because of a political strategy to get Grandpa Jed a second term, and that our mother was raped. If that didn't burn us out, why would this? I don't want to sound arrogant, but we're smart, we're young, we know what we're doing, we're cute, we encourage other young people to become involved... and since you still look pretty young, that's a good thing for you."
"Dad thinks children aren't trusted with enough responsibility when they're young, and that's why we're failing as a society," Huck put in suddenly, turning his attention away from his own bowl of ice cream.
"The four of you are entirely too smart."
They just waited, gazing at him. He looked back at them, debating and hesitating on a silent agreement. What would be worse?
"It's going to disrupt your school schedules," he attempted.
"Sam and Al are practically juniors, and we went through this already," Claudia replied quietly, fixing her gaze on him. He hesitated and then nodded, conceding another point.
"You raised us to believe," Al noted, voice trembling a little. "You raised us to believe in the impossible, and what was right and what was hard and what must be done, and then you put us through the fire by telling us the truth when we asked, and we made it. And we still believe. We don't care if know no one knows, if we're back in some office typing memos, just as long as we're a part of it."
Sam's gaze suddenly rested on Samantha, who gazed back up at him quietly. It was times like this when he wondered if they were really identical, when Al's eyes snapped bright blue fire and she unleashed all the eloquent speech she'd been taught by some of the best minds in the country, while Samantha's eyes turned a dusky, vulnerable blue and she communicated in utter silence, letting her body language alone carry her message.
So he was surprised when she suddenly spoke, in a low, quiet voice. "You can speak from your heart in someone else's words the way the President can," and here he jumped, staring at her in wide-eyed shock as Huck and Claudia turned to her, but she continued, "and you can craft those words, and put a public face on why those words are good, and you can go pull the inside political plays to bring them to fruitition. You're all of us, Sam, and to have you use all those things would be a tremendous gift to everyone. It's not going to be easy; when have we ever done anything easy? What it will be is a sight to see, truly a sight to see."
Her inflections were exactly like CJ's, even though he'd never heard those particular words spoken aloud before.
Her voice was filled with a beautiful force.
Sam didn't think he could breathe.
A delicate strand of belief ran through the room, and Al clasped her hands, eyes shining. "And someday there's gonna be a Seaborn for America poster..."
His lips parted, as Huck and Claudia straightened and stood. They'd never heard those words before, either, but they, too, knew the sides of politics.
"How did you know about that?" he managed at last.
"She left stuff for us, too," Sam replied quietly.
"But... that was..." his breath caught again, against memory and belief and promise.
"She told us, if we hadn't lost it when we asked the question, and said we had to know the truth there, to go to Aunt Carol, because she'd know if we were really ready to know it," Al answered.
"We asked Aunt Carol for the last tape on our birthday," Sam noted. "She warned us that it was marked for when we were fifteen or sixteen, but that our mother left it up to her judgment."
Claudia and Al's gazes met quietly.
"And?" Sam prompted.
"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth..." Sam said softly. "How can you ask us to not continue that belief she had in you, Uncle Sam? We're not old enough to vote."
"What is it?" he pressed quietly, watching Huck write with his index finger, eyes closed.
"Sixty-five percent of those polled would have believed there was an affair between the two of you had she not carried us to term," Sam replied. Devastatingly. Quietly. Flatly, in the same delicate tone she had used to recite information on rape and battery after finding out about her mother.
"Oh, my God," Sam whispered. "Oh, God... you know..."
The Cregg twins were silent.
"Uncle Sam," Claudia started. He turned to her. "We love you very much. But sometimes, you have to know the whole truth before you can commit to something, because only then do you know what you're really believing in. And Sam and Al told us about this last month when they came over to Dad's."
"Huck, look at me." The boy opened his eyes and looked up. Sam looked around at each of them in turn, and slowly nodded. "Come here." Obediently, they came up to him, and Sam wrapped all four in a hug, kissing each of them in turn. "I don't know how you do it, but you've convinced me."
Grins broke out, and he led them into the large living room.
Josh and Toby stood.
"You convinced him." Josh noted. His best friend immediately pointed an accusing finger at him.
"You were in cahoots with these four!"
"Sam, you're the most idealistic of all of us. If they couldn't show you this was the right thing, a good thing, then this was doomed from the start."
"Let's start," Toby half-growled, glancing approvingly at his two children. "I would really like to get out of here before the end of the month."
Donna's laughter chimed as she stood. "I'll be right back." The four kids tucked themselves onto a loveseat, leaving the comfortable chairs around the low table for the adults. As Donna came back in, the door chimed, and Josh got up, muttering a quick apology at his mentors and stand-in fathers.
"We're not late, are we?" Carol asked, stepping in.
"Nah, Sam and the kids were arguing." Josh stood back to let her come through, greeting Amy and Andi. Carol's gaze swung to the four, and she slowly nodded.
"Oh? And what were they arguing about?" Andi asked, shrugging out of her light coat.
"Hi, Mom," Claudia waved casually. Her mother just lifted her eyebrows.
"The right to participate in the democratic process," Huck responded.
"Ah, good." She turned to Toby. "I detect your influence, Pokey."
"Yeah," he answered levelly before looking around with annoyance. "There are far too many people in here."
"And we're not all even here yet, Toby," Jed retorted cheerfully. As if on cue, the back door thudded open, followed shortly by Mallory, Charlie, and Zoey.
Sam stood and rotated in place, apparently counting. "Jed, Leo, Josh, Toby, Donna, Carol, Charlie, Mallory, Zoey, Amy, Andi, and the kids. Is that it?"
"I'm not covering the takeout bill," Charlie declared. Zoey thumped him on the arm. "Ow. And I'm not. There's sixteen people here."
"Yeah, but two of us can't have bad food," Jed told him from the other side of the table.
"Assuming we even remember to stop and eat, we're gonna be splitting it," Josh told them. "So. This is the thing. How do we start?"
"Give me a notebook," Toby demanded. The others just looked at him. "Give me something to write on."
Carol tossed a notebook at him. "And what're you going to be doing?" Sam asked.
Toby had already shifted into his classic writing position and didn't bother to look up. "I'm going to sit here and craft your message while the rest of you argue until dinnertime."
"We appreciate the vote of confidence, Toby."
"I know."
"Where do we start?"
"Issues."
"Give me one of those notebooks."
"At least you know you'll start with the support of the WLC, Sam."
"I appreciate that, Amy. Between you, Donna, and Mallory, I know I have plenty of support from women."
"And besides that."
"Well, you've never been in the military, but that's becoming more and more common."
"Let's leave that for a while, okay?"
"You can leave it until a week before the election," Al recommended.
Twelve people looked over at her for a shocked moment.
"What? You can, I mean Uncle Sam can... whatever. It's not a big issue."
"Go outside, turn around three times, and spit," Josh directed.
"What'd I do?"
"All of you," Charlie supported.
"Outside," Donna emphasized.
"All four of us?" Claudia sighed.
"Yeah!"
"Go outside," Sam told them.
They looked at each other.
"You'd better go outside, you guys," Andi suggested, looking around the table.
"But what did-"
"Outside. Turn around three times, and spit," Carol ordered.
"Just go," Zoey told them. "It's easier."
"You didn't want to warn them?" Mallory asked the room at large.
"Nope," Josh answered. "Seriously. Go outside, turn around three times, and spit."
"And curse," Toby contributed, still writing.
"You are not telling my children to curse," Andi retorted.
"They're my kids too."
"And they're not learning how to curse yet, Toby!"
"Yeah, don't curse, and you can use the back. But do it all, do it now."
Eight eyes rolled, and the four stood up and trooped out back.
"Will you please tell us what we did now?" Al requested as she sat back down.
"No tempting fate," Donna and Carol responded in unison.
"No springing new things on us," Sam retorted with an eye-roll.
"Okay," Josh sighed. "Here's how it is. You don't ever, ever do or say anything to imply winning. At all. That's tempting fate."
"So... no references to..."
"Convention, election night, the works."
"Now you have to go outside," Sam told his friend with a small smirk.
"It doesn't count when it's just an example, Sam."
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm not the one that tempted fate in front of Toby back on Election Night 2002."
"Fine."
"So how can we actually help?" Claudia wanted to know.
"Jump in when you see something you know," Josh directed.
They exchanged glances, mildly frustrated. After a couple of minutes, Sam stood.
"Excuse me."
"Yes?"
"Can we please have some of the markers and posterboard stuff we got earlier?"
"Sure." Donna turned and dug into the bag, tossing the writing materials to them as Zoey tugged out several pieces of the large, sturdy, and somewhat flexible sheets.
"Need some scissors?" she offered.
Al's mouth quirked. "Maybe. Yes."
"Here."
"Thanks." They split the posterboard into two piles on the loveseat and crouched in front of it, examining the smooth blankness.
"Hmm..." Al tilted her head a little.
"Let's do this."
"Which is red and which is blue?"
"Does it matter?"
"Well, red is associated with blood and violence, so do we want the 'Seaborn' or 'America' to be red?"
"Do it both ways?"
"You gonna do one of these?"
"Maybe."
"Fine."
"Seaborn should be blue. Sea, blue, born in America, liberty..."
"Where do you come up with that stuff?"
A shrug. "I have no idea. Can you take the marker so I can straighten up or something?"
"Sure. Sorry." Samantha took the blue marker and uncapped it, examining it for a second before shrugging it and placing the tip lightly to the surface of the poster.
"We should have a flag across that when it's printed," Al suggested.
"Yeah. What's your thing?"
"I'm thinking."
"I can see that." Al's fingers had been constantly tracing over her own posterboard for the past couple of minutes.
Sam's elegant writing had formed the 'Seaborn', and she went back, thickening the letters a little.
"Black?"
"To outline the 'for', yeah. Thanks." A thin line sketched out the simple word. So simple... three little letters, the middle word in a three-word call to a better kind of politics.
Jed Bartlet had Leo McGarry and a napkin.
Sam Seaborn would have four adolescents with markers and posterboard.
"There..." Sam breathed, finishing off the tail of the 'a' and tilting her head. "I'm not totally happy with it..."
"You're not thinking of alternating colors, are you?" Claudia asked.
"No."
"Good, 'cause that would look..."
"Immature?"
"I was going to say amateur."
"Same thing." Sam turned her gaze to her sister's work. It was geometric and intertwined, and like 'Seaborn for America', a little simple, a call back to something else. 'Uncle Sam for President'... with 'President' in the middle, horizontal, and 'Uncle' spelled out vertically, sharing the 'e' with the first one in 'President', then 'Sam' next to it, starting from the 's', and 'for' hovering above the second half of 'President'.
"I blame our history textbooks," Al defended. "And I don't know whether 'for' looks better horizontally or vertically." She turned a little for a moment, listening to the conversation at the table. "They're not watching."
"That's okay." Sam flipped the first one over and let it lean against the side of the loveseat. "That gives me an idea, actually."
"Yeah?"
"Uncle Sam wants you to vote for him."
"Ooh, I like!"
"It's longer..." Huck peered at the empty expanse critically.
"Well, 'Uncle Sam' goes at the top for sure... how were those posters arranged, anyway?"
"The 'Uncle Sam wants you' was always at the top, in big letters, with the Uncle Sam in the middle, pointing out of the poster, and then the other text at the bottom, I think."
"May as well try it."
"You guys have been thinking about this, haven't you?" Claudia breathed, leaning over for a better look.
"Yeah." Sam bit her lip, finally setting the marker down and drawing a thick edge for the first words.
"And what about you?" Huck asked Al.
"Hmm... 'Seaborn for America', 'Uncle Sam for President', 'Uncle Sam wants you to vote for him', and...."
"There should probably be a simple 'Seaborn for President' spot... picture of him in the middle or something..."
"Yeah. Hmm..."
Sam paused and looked over. "Racing stars."
"What?"
"Impression of movement, change, advancement."
"'Seaborn for a better America'?"
"Brighter, better, future..."
"That's good."
Slowly, the table fell silent, but they were so absorbed they didn't notice until they turned to hand the markers back.
"Did we jinx something else?" Sam asked, suppressed nervousness and laughter vying in her voice.
"What're you doing?" Josh asked softly.
"Stuff."
"For Uncle Sam?" Carol asked. They nodded. "Let's see it."
"I don't know if..."
"Come on," Leo interrupted gently. "Let's see it, kids." They looked at him hesitantly for a long moment, and finally smiled. Al turned and picked up what she'd just been working on.
"Seaborn: A Better America," Zoey read. "Accurate and catchy."
"Why, thank you, Zoey."
"Watch the ego," Mallory laughed lightly. "It's good. Who-"
"Huck thought of it, I made it," Al said promptly.
"Sam?" Donna asked gently. She ducked her head and retrieved the 'Uncle Sam wants you to vote for him' poster, holding it up shyly before her face and then slowly peeking around it.
Amy and Jed both started chuckling. "I like it."
"It's cute, it uses a preexisting American figure, and brings in the word 'vote'."
Sam smiled in relief. "Thanks."
Al picked up her next one. "We're going to do another version of this one... maybe a couple, there's some combinations of the words..."
"'Uncle Sam for President'," Josh read. "How do you guys come up with these things?"
"We've been thinking a lot."
"I see one more," Carol prompted gently.
"We need to put the flag on back of some of these," Sam said, picking up the first one.
Nobody moved.
"Come here," Jed directed at last. Still holding the poster, Samantha came shyly over to his comfortable chair and looked down at him expectantly. "That's beautiful." One finger traced lightly along the letters. "Isn't that beautiful, Leo?"
"Yes, it is," Leo agreed, smiling up at his granddaughter. "Let everybody see it good, kid."
"Sam," Sam directed, stopping her as she turned. "May I see it, please?"
"Yeah." She handed it across and watched him look at it.
"'And someday'," he quoted, "'there's gonna be a Seaborn for America poster and you're going to look at it and say 'look what happened'.' Wow. Thank you."
"Sure." She stood there a little awkwardly and smiled, tucking her hair back behind her ears.
Sam lowered the poster to the center of the table. "No touching this," he warned. Toby glanced up and over at it.
"Good idea," he said, and returned to his writing.
"What's next?" Mallory asked, one hand tracing the letters in midair.
"Sam?" Leo asked after a minute. The younger man looked up. "Go on."
"Yeah." Sam drew a deep breath and let it out. "We're going to have to have lots of family photo ops over the next two and a half years."
"We're gonna start out with guest lectures, panels, every public appearance we can fit in without affecting Sam's Senate schedule," Josh picked up. "What we're not gonna do is start out in New Hampshire or Iowa, and certainly not in the towns traditionally used to kick off campaigns."
"Nuclear waste disposal in Nevada," Al noted.
"Energy resources in California."
"Logging."
"Habitat and oil drilling in Alaska."
"Mining safety in Montana, Utah, Kentucky, the Virginias..."
"The border in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona."
"Coastal erosion."
"Poverty in the Southern states."
"Energy everywhere."
"Crime rates and drug use."
"That's too far to the left."
"What, you want people making chicken noises before this has even gotten off the ground?"
"I've been voting for more money for treatment for the last five years, and I've floated at least ten bills for it."
"Some of them with me."
"Yeah."
"Some of this will depend on the VP."
"Let's worry about that next year."
"Sometime he's gonna--sorry, you're going to, Sam--have to address international issues and the possibility of terrorism here."
"Yeah."
"This is a lot of issues."
"We're not done yet."
"Sam, you've always supported alternate energy, pro-environment stuff... you've got to make it clear that you don't think it's just a California issue, while also making it clear to Californians that you still care about them."
"No kidding. I have been doing this for a little while, you know."
"There should be a spot on that."
"Also on the treatment thing."
"People are gonna think he's soft on crime."
"Then they can ask me about my voting record."
"Um, yeah, I think anybody who brings that up is going to have to spin it really well before we have to worry too much."
"Well, we all think this is good, but we've got to make everyone else think it."
"I know that! He just can't run away from himself."
"There's going to be some concern that some of this will sound patronizing."
"We're pro-education, not pro-patronization," came the retort. "If people are that curious, they can ask Sam about it."
"We're assuming they will be curious."
"That's a good point."
"It'd be easier to just elect a candidate who will talk about issues in a way they're familiar with and not have to worry about all of this."
"If we don't raise the level of public debate in this country, I swear, I'm quitting."
"We'll raise it, we'll raise it. I'm just saying... we have to address this accurately in the short span allowed us by the presumed attention span of the average American watching TV or listening to the radio or looking at a billboard, and that's not the easiest thing in the world."
"You haven't forgotten the women, have you?"
"No, no, not at all..."
"But you feel more confident of your strategy with regard to women?"
"Yeah."
"You're going to have to take a stance on a woman's right to choose."
"Yes, well..." Sam stopped and his gaze went to the girls.
"You couldn't have maybe brought that up when they weren't in the room?" Josh accused.
"No, Josh, she's right," Donna argued back. "It's not like Sam and Al don't know, and we have to start thinking about it now. It's not going to be a small issue if it does come up."
"No woman should feel pressured to choose bearing a child because of how society might judge her," Andi put in.
"And it will come up," Leo promised. "It will come up." He too looked at Sam and Al, who were deep in thought.
"And in the case of..." Carol started before sighing and running a hand through her hair. "Yeah."
"You know," Sam told them lightly from where she sat on the couch, "we're the best-case scenario."
"That still doesn't get us around the fact that every single person in this room is pro-choice," Charlie said mildly. "Well, just about."
"Well, when it comes to that, any sane person is pro-choice," Jed observed, catching his son-in-law's look.
Sam turned to Amy. "There's no way to avoid this?"
She shook her head, as did Donna. "I'm sorry, Sam. You've got to take a stance and you can't run away from yourself and you can't seem hypocritical."
"I said," Sam repeated, "we're the best-case scenario."
"And?" Josh prompted.
Al lifted one slim shoulder. "It's not a binary issue. And the country has really gotten conservative enough about some things that it's not even as good as it was when we were born, in a way. But we're the best-case scenario, and not just for children of a rape situation."
"She's right. Any kid can turn out well or poorly depending on the upbringing. But that's practically a pro-life argument."
"The right to choose has been practically painted into a satirical corner where it's just about convenience. And I think that as Galileo's first project permeates further, there'll be less unplanned pregnancies. But it's about the woman's long-term health."
"We're still stuck on the pro-life side."
"No, you want it to be a real choice for every woman, so educate people about it! It's not any different than giving the stats on treatment versus enforcement."
"Yeah, it is!"
"It really isn't. Sorry, Leo, but you're an argument for treatment, and Sam and Al are an argument for... oh, hell."
"We'll take it," Al said quietly.
"Sorry?"
"I said we'll take it. When it comes up, we'll answer it."
"What are you?"
"Oh, we're both pro-choice when it comes down to it. But sometimes you have to just tell the truth."
"Over ten years after the fact, you think we should accuse the American public of being inflexible and closed-minded?"
"Unless you want to bull it through as all-out pro-choice."
"CJ thought I should say that I disagreed with her because I didn't think it was right for anyone to keep a child because of public opinion, but that her lack of a choice has nothing to do with how much I love Samantha and Abigail."
"That might be as clean as it gets," Josh said after a minute.
"I think we'd better move on to something a little bit simpler."
"You girls okay?" Mallory asked.
"Yeah."
"Thanks, Aunt Mal. We're fine."
"You'll be fine," Jed nodded at all of them.
They looked over at their two mentors.
"We will do what is hard," Charlie started.
"And we will do what is right..."
"We reach for the stars."
"And we will forge on with a determination not dreamed of before."
