Toby only half-listened to the pedantic chatter from the anchors as he dug out an unopened bag of pretzels.  Two bottles of Sam Adams sat waiting by his armchair, he had a tape in the VCR, and his ever-present legal pad was at the ready.  Now all he needed was for the damn thing to start.

He dropped into his chair and grabbed the remote, flipping restlessly between CNN and MSNBC, but of course, none of the talking heads had anything of interest to say.  Finally, just before Toby was ready to crawl through the screen and tell Kirby Graham where he could stuff his opinion on the "Bartlet legacy of sugarcoating the truth," the Speaker introduced him.

Baker.

Toby still had trouble thinking of Gregory W. Baker, that self-righteous hack, as the president.  He fought the childish urge to lob a pretzel at the screen, which was showing both Baker's nauseating smirk and the whole of Congress inexplicably giving him a standing ovation.

Toby could never quite decide who deserved the bulk of his ire -- the self-satisfied Republicans who revered Baker or the damn Democrats who lapped at his boots.

After a disgustingly long time, the din died down enough for Baker to start. "Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, esteemed colleagues, honorable guests, and my fellow Americans, I have the pleasure--"

The phone's ring was really just too loud, Toby thought as he snatched it from the table.  And why the hell hadn't he thought to turn it off?  "What?"

"You know who he forgot to mention?" asked a familiar, far too cheerful voice.

"Sam?"  Toby was more than a little surprised to hear from his former deputy.  They hadn't lost touch, exactly.  It was more that Toby wasn't big on chatty phone calls or overly long emails.  Aside from the occasional terse updates ("It's hard to believe that there are people alive who are less familiar with the concept of punctuation in a compound sentence than you, and yet there they are.  An entire classroom of idiots!"), Toby hadn't talked to Sam much in the year since they'd left office.

Of course, now that he thought about it, Toby figured hearing from Sam tonight was pretty much inevitable.

"Yeah," Sam said. "I just wanted to point out that Baker forgot to include 'my corporate masters' in that list."

Toby swallowed a laugh.  "Are you going to shut up so we can watch this?"

He could tell Sam was smiling when he answered, "Sure."

Toby turned back to the TV in time to hear, "I'm here to tell you that the state of our union has never been stronger."

"How original," Toby observed, rolling his eyes.  He'd lobbied for four years to get President Bartlet to alter the formulaic opening.

Sam asked, "Has anyone ever stood up there and said, 'Well, to be honest, the state of our union is precarious; we're balancing perilously over a pit of debt and recession thanks to the brilliant minds of my fellow Party members who maintained that deregulation and trickle-down economics were viable policies instead of the latest in a long history of screwing the masses to concentrate wealth in the hands of the elite?'"

Toby blinked.  "No."

"Huh."

"Yeah."

On screen, Baker poured on the Good Ol' Boy charm, slathering each sentence with a generous helping of his Appalachian accent and using very few multi-syllabic words.  Still trying to be the polar opposite of Jed Bartlet, Toby surmised. Man of the people to Bartlet's East Coast elite.  Economic conservative to Bartlet's tax-and-spend liberalism.  The list of differences between the two men was quite long.

Toby, though, considered the two men's respective moral compasses to be the most telling difference.  Jed Bartlet's decision to conceal his illness had cost him not just re-election, but his reputation as a decent, caring man.  It also, perversely enough, set the stage for Baker -- whose past was littered with questionable dealings -- to claim the moral high ground.  The situation was so frustrating it had prompted Toby to toss up his hands and leave politics altogether.  Sure, teaching had considerable drawbacks (how was it possible for someone to graduate from high school and make it through two years of college without acquiring the ability to properly place a period?) but at least he was no longer running full tilt into the proverbial wall.

Damn, he missed politics.

Toby took a sizable swig of beer, then nearly choked on it when Baker said, "I'm committed to a patient's bill of rights and prescription drug care for seniors."

On the other end of the line, Sam sputtered, "What'd he just say?"

"Swear to God, he just said he supports a patient's bill of rights."

"This early on?" Sam asked, dumbfounded.  "What the hell is he doing?"

"Co-opting Democratic ideas to expand his moderate base," Toby answered, glowering at the shot of the Senate Minority Leader standing and applauding.  Terminal suckups, Toby thought. Damn the Democratic Party to hell.  First, they rolled over and let Baker's reactionary conservative judicial nominees sail through, now they're cheering like the ever-widening gap between the upper class and the rest of American society was a good thing.

"He doesn't have a moderate base of support," Sam pointed out.  "He appointed conservative Cabinet members and nominated conservative judges to keep the whacko right flank of the Party happy.  He knows he doesn't have a mandate to govern hard right."

Toby sighed.  "He won the election--"

"Without a majority of votes," Sam interrupted stubbornly.  "It's hardly a mandate to take office with the support of 45% of the Americans who bothered to vote in the first place."

"The Democrats need an aggressive Get out the Vote campaign for the midterms," Toby grumbled, clipping the end of his cigar a little more forcefully than usual.  "And President Bartlet was elected with 43% of the vote, Sam."

Momentarily stumped, Sam stayed silent as onscreen Baker crowed about economic stability and lower taxes.  Toby made a strangled noise.

"What?" Sam asked.

"'The economy is recovering quick,'" Toby repeated, his voice pained.  "Is that man unacquainted with the concept of adverbs?"

"Probably," Sam answered absently.  "Besides, we were working for the common good, Toby."

Exhaling a stream of smoke, Toby paused before he asked, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"When we took office," Sam explained in that passionate, almost zealous tone in his voice that he got whenever he talked about the Bartlet administration.  It seemed to Toby that after the failed re-election bid, Sam had somehow turned the MS scandal into a black and white situation.  Maybe it was easier for him to believe that the President made an honest mistake, and that the ensuing debacle was the result of a vicious, partisan smear campaign.

And Josh's defection, of course.

Toby wasn't particularly thrilled with Josh either.  Not that he couldn't understand Josh's fear that the country would fall into Baker's hands.  A year later, and Toby still couldn't hear the words "President Baker" without cringing.  But loyalty to the Party came second, in Toby's mind, to loyalty to Jed Bartlet.

After he'd blown up at President Bartlet in the Oval Office, anyway.

But Sam had always been the most idealistic of the former staffers, and he'd been the most disillusioned after Bartlet's disclosure.  He was also, if Toby's analysis from afar was correct, the one finding it the most difficult to move on.  (Except possibly Josh, who'd taken the past year off, hiding out in his condo in Georgetown and trying to get back into the good graces of the DNC.)

Sam, like CJ and Donna, had moved to the West Coast and started a new phase of his life.  But he was still incredibly bitter, and Toby wasn't in the mood for another rehashing of the Re-Election Bid That Wasn't.  So he tried to sidestep the conversation.  "Sam, we took office without a mandate, and it took us nearly a year to implement the most moderate of our campaign promises.  And with all of that, we didn't stack the judiciary or the Cabinet with bleeding-heart liberals."

"Millicent Griffith," Sam offered.  "Fitz is pretty liberal for a military guy.  The Labor Secretary--"

"Sam," Toby interrupted.  "I'm trying to watch the speech."

"He's not saying anything," Sam pointed out.  "He's been very, very careful to use words like 'want' and 'would like' and 'this country needs,' instead of 'promise' and 'vow.'  It's a rhetorical exercise."

"Every State of the Union is a rhetorical exercise," Toby pointed out, frustrated.  "Have you forgotten what it was like to write it?"

"No," Sam answered sharply.  "I remember exactly what it was like to write it, which is why I can analyze what Baker is saying -- or not saying -- with very little effort.  That thing just now about the business climate in the country?  That was a little wink and a nod to his corporate sponsors.  He's saying he won't support the Democratic initiative in the House to reinstate the alternative minimum tax."

"Yeah," Toby groused, "because God forbid the government tax the billion dollars in profits American companies make on the backs of their employees, many of whom make minimum wage, but not a living wage."

There was a momentary silence, which Toby took advantage of to scowl at the smirking face on TV and scrawl a couple of notes. Then Sam said, "Did he just misuse the word average?"

"Yes." Toby glared at the House minority leader. "Do you see Burkett?  What the hell is he doing cheering for an anti-affirmative action measure?"

"Well," Sam answered, "it was so cleverly couched in words like 'equal opportunity for all our citizens' maybe he misunderstood."

"Sam."

"That was a joke, Toby."

***

10.20.04