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MY GUESTBOOK
Stanley jotted something down on his notepad without looking down. I could never do that. I�m so anal about my writing that I can�t just blindly put pen to paper, even if I�m just making a grocery list. �Tell me about the campaign.�
�What do you want to know?�
�How did you get involved?� Stanley asked. Again with the starting off slow.
�It was brought to my attention that there were a lot of districts that Democrats were not represented at all, and if they were the candidates were laughable at best,� I explained. �The candidate for Orange County, in particular, had suffered multiple heart attacks and was expected to run against a young, healthy, favoured Republican. I started� I guess you could call it �obsessing�, though I don�t really like the term, personally, about this, and when our candidate died� I made some rash decisions. The President had an event in the area, so I stopped by the headquarters and found out that the campaign manager was going to keep going because the widow wanted him to, and somehow I ended up making a promise to run for the seat if Will�Will Bailey, the campaign manager�managed to get our candidate elected despite the fact that he was, you know, no longer able to campaign.�
Stanley nodded.
�I guess we got a lot of sympathy votes, because Will did it, he got out guy elected, and the next thing I know I�m taking a leave of absence from work and packing up my office and heading out to California,� I continued. I sighed heavily, feeling utterly defeated. �I always planned to run for Congress one day. Never this soon, and definitely not before President Bartlet is out of office, but I� I couldn�t break my promise. The woman had just lost her husband and all she wanted was someone to run in his place. The thing is� I didn�t really give it everything I could have. I mean, one day I�m terrified about having to go through the stress of writing yet another Inaugural, and the next I�m trying to get elected to Congress in a district that already hates me on principle because I worked for the President and fought for things that made life a little less comfortable for the affluent.�
�Did you have insomnia during the campaign?�
I shrugged. �A little. Nothing like I do now. It wasn�t really that big a deal, though. If I couldn�t sleep I�d just, you know� work. A self-destructive habit that I�m sure everyone who works in the West Wing has developed.� Stanley made a note about that, again without looking. I kind of hate him for being able to do that, though exactly why I would hate him for being able to write without looking was completely lost on me. �I guess what I�m saying is that I never really noticed it.�
�That�s probably true,� Stanley nodded. �Tell me what happened with the campaign. Pretend, for the purposes of this conversation, that I have no knowledge of politics, which, to be perfectly honest, is pretty close to the truth.�