The numbers were never good anymore.  Notwithstanding all the stories educating the public about how MS wasn't fatal and how it wasn't exactly unprecedented for a president who had serious health problems to do an exemplary job as commander in chief, every poll conducted internally or externally had them hovering around the low forties.

Off the top of his head, Josh could name three Democrats and four Republicans whose numbers were better than theirs.  And that wasn't counting those dark horses no one had heard of yet who were starting to realize that the 2002 election was wide open and that maybe running for the presidency was not such a crazy idea.

Dark horses like Josiah Bartlet had been in 1998.

Josh leaned his head against the shower wall and let the stream of cold water wash over him, hoping it would clear his head.  His brain, unfortunately, remained filled with the polling data, RU-486 and the tobacco suit.

He had no control over the data, Leo wouldn't let him make the call that could save them from the repercussions of the RU-486 announcement, and he'd blown the tobacco thing.  All in all, he was not having a stellar month.

Toweling off quickly, he wandered back into the bedroom in search of his underwear.

And came face to face with Donna, who apparently hadn't moved from the exact spot she'd been standing in when he'd shut the bathroom door on her.

He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard himself yelp.  He thanked whatever gods looked after incompetent political operatives that he'd thought to wrap a towel around himself before he'd exited the bathroom.  Because, really, there were places you didn't want to go with your assistant days before you were likely to be issued a grand jury subpoena.

"How?" Donna asked.  Which even for her, Josh thought, was one hell of a non sequitur.

"How what?" he asked.  "Would you please get out of my bedroom?" might have been a more appropriate question, but grand jury subpoenas notwithstanding, he'd crossed this weird sort of intimacy line with Donna long ago anyway.

"How did you blow the tobacco suit?  We got the money."  She handed him a clean undershirt and boxers, and it occurred to him that no one else had an assistant who laid out their clean clothes while they showered.

He wasn't sure whether that thought was disturbing or comforting.

He made a twirling motion with his finger to indicate that Donna should turn her back while he dressed.  "As Bruno pointed out, I made a strategic error there.  All I was thinking about was getting the funding for the Justice Department's suit.  I completely overlooked the big picture."

"And funding the suit isn't the big picture?"

"Not now, no," Josh answered as he dropped the towel and stepped into his boxers.  "If Kalmbach refuses to fund the suit, he looks like he's a tool of Big Tobacco.  It weakens him as a potential candidate.  Who's going to vote for the guy who put the interests of the tobacco companies ahead of the interests of all those lung cancer victims?"

"Tobacco farmers?" Donna asked.

"There are a lot fewer of those than there are families who have lost someone to lung cancer.  Or parents who worry that their children will fall under the spell of Joe Camel and get hooked on nicotine.  We could have ruled Kalmbach out as a candidate right there.  Instead, he's now the guy who funded the suit against Big Tobacco.  The press won't remember how long it took him to do it; they'll just eat up the soundbites of him announcing the funding and bemoaning the toll tobacco has taken on the nation's health."

He'd gotten his undershirt, boxers and dress shirt on and with that bizarre sort of telepathy she had at moments like this, Donna turned back around to face him.  "And that's what you're brooding about?" she asked.

"I blew it," he repeated.  "I wasn't thinking in terms of the campaign.  I wasn't thinking about Kalmbach as a potential opponent."

"No, you were thinking about getting the Justice Department the money it needed to go after the tobacco companies.  You were thinking like the Deputy Chief of Staff.  Also like a decent human being."

She had that look on her face.  Not the freaked out, "Ohmigod, is Josh having another nervous breakdown?" look she'd been wearing when he'd closed the bathroom door.  This was that look she reserved for moments when she was about to go all girly and emotional on him.

The wise course of action, all things considered, was to ignore that look.

"Being a decent human being is hardly the primary qualification for conducting a presidential election," he pointed out.

"It should be."

There were moments when it did no good to try to convince Donna that she was being naïve, so he simply nodded and went on making his point while he zipped up his pants.  "Still, I ceded the high ground to Kalmbach and that's going to hurt us.  And we can't afford to be hurt."

"And this whole high ground thing is such a brilliant strategy that only the great Joshua Lyman could think of it?"

"Technically, Bruno thought of it first."

"So if Bruno could think of it, why couldn't Kalmbach?"

"I'm sure he could."  He winced at how bitter he sounded, even to himself.  "Apparently I'm the only one who had trouble with the concept."

"So whether you'd leaked the press release or not, Kalmbach would have approved the money?"

"Eventually.  I suppose."  He looked around the room and muttered, "Where the hell is my belt?"

"Second drawer on the left.  So all you did was push him to act sooner?"

"I'm thinking that's not the way I'd phrase it if I were talking to Leo, but yeah."

"So there's less chance the Justice Department will run out of money for the suit before Kalmbach acts?"

"Yeah, so where you're going with this is that I'm some kind of hero for getting the funding sooner?  'Cause while I appreciate the thought, the Justice Department is still way overmatched by the tobacco companies.  It's unlikely that this money will make that much of a difference."

"'Hero' is not the word I was going for."  She took the tie out of his hand and turned up his shirt collar.  "'Not a complete yutz' was closer to what I had in mind."

"See?" he said as she finished with the tie and smoothed his shirt collar back down.  "There you go, mocking a person in his hour of need.  It's one of your less attractive qualities."

"And one, not coincidentally, that I picked up from you."

He reminded himself that bedrooms and assistants who stood so close that he could inhale her scent made for a dangerous combination.  No matter how wide her eyes got when she smiled at him.  He took a few steps away from her and felt marginally safer.  "Yeah, so I had shoes when I came in here last night," he said.

It took her all of five seconds to find where he'd kicked them off by the closet door and another three seconds to locate a pair of socks that matched his suit.  "Can't we keep putting pressure on Kalmbach and the subcommittee to continue the funding when this money runs out?" she asked.

"We can, but Kalmbach still gets the glory.  He's the guy taking on Big Tobacco; we're the baby killers."

"We're the champions of women's rights."

"Not how it's going to play in America's Heartland."

"As a native of Wisconsin, which is about as close as you can get to America's Heartland, wherever that is--"

"Okay, you do realize that you contradicted yourself right there?"

"Shut up.  My point is that you shouldn't underestimate people.  Maybe they can see through all the media hype."

"I often wonder why your parents didn't just name you Pollyanna and be done with it."

"I happen to think my point is a valid one," she asserted as she retrieved his jacket from the closet.

"It doesn't matter."  She stood behind him and held the jacket out for him.  "We still lose the points we should have gained from the tobacco thing," he said as he slipped the jacket on.

"Yeah, but if we keep putting the pressure on Kalmbach, won't we eventually get the points?  I mean, after a while, doesn't it become clear that we're the ones who really want this?"

"Not if the press is writing about MS and grand juries and whether the Bartlets are, you know, staying together for the good of the presidency."

"They can't write about that stuff forever," she insisted.  "Sooner or later, people get tired of it.  Don't they?"

He turned back around to face her and noticed that her smile was gone.  Her forehead was all puckered up, as though he'd made her worry.  "Possibly," he said, not so much because he agreed but because he couldn't deal with upsetting Donna on top of everything else.

"And CJ can spin it our way in her briefings.  You know, in a couple of weeks when the rest of this has died down."

"Maybe."

"Toby and Sam can write a speech about tobacco for the President."

"We can put on a show in the barn."

"You have to mock me, don't you?"

He nodded solemnly.  "Yes, I do."

"And, see, I was going to say something nice to you."

"And now?"

"Not gonna happen.  You need your backpack?"

"Leave it here."

She put her hand on his shoulder as they started out the door.  "You really are one, you know," she said softly.

After a swift mental review of their conversation, he thought he got what she was referring to.  "A complete yutz?" he asked.

"A decent human being," she replied.  "And since you're the one responsible for getting the Justice Department's suit funded and since that might save lives someday, you may possibly also qualify as a hero.  But the jury's still out on that one, so don't let it go to your head."

"If I tell anyone you said that, you'll deny it, right?"

"Absolutely."  She put her arm around him as they headed out the door.  He thought that she was wrong about saving the tobacco fiasco and he still believed she was too naïve to be let out in Washington alone.  But Donnatella Moss thought he was a decent man.

There were, he decided, worse things to be.

THE END

10.19.01