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MY GUESTBOOK
I wasn�t there when Josh found out, but I heard what his reaction was, both from CJ and Toby, who were the ones that told him, and from Donna, who had come to me because she was worried about how everything was affecting him. First, of course, was shock. I doubt he had thought about the �piece of paper� since CJ asked him if he knew what it was. He was so busy dealing with the FEC nominations, something he didn�t even think would see the light of day, that he didn�t have time for anything else, especially something as vague and trivial as a piece of paper that was mentioned in the gaggle. I had responded similarly, my head too far into the useless meeting I was stuck in about gays in the military for something as potentially innocuous as a piece of paper. Second was betrayal. Josh would battle fire and brimstone for President Bartlet. He couldn�t comprehend the thought that someone he had loved, in some way or another, for the better part of five years had not only thought about everything there was to take Bartlet down, but she had put it in writing and allowed it to get out. Third was anger. I�m not sure if he was angrier at Mandy for writing the paper or at himself for not realizing that she would have written the paper, but none of us had seen Josh that furious before. And I mean ever.
There wasn�t really a fourth level to his reaction. He didn�t have time for one. We were called into a meeting in Leo�s office and somehow we ended up changing tactics completely. No more finding the safe way, the middle road. We were going to run into walls full steam ahead and pray that we broke through to the other side instead of ending up looking like a million and one Daffy Duck cartoons.
The President threw his cap over the wall and Al Kiefer and Joey Lucas started doing their polling and Mandy was out of the inner circle, though truth be told she had never been that deeply imbedded in it to begin with. She was always too ambitious, too cold and blunt to really find a home in the tight-knit family of bleeding-heart liberals that made up the senior staff. We never outright rejected her, but everyone made sure that she knew that, because of her actions, she was on the outside looking in.
Josh told me that one night, a few days before Toby called Joey to get her to come to DC, Mandy showed up at his place and tried to invite herself in for whatever it was that they usually did together when one of them was going through a particularly bad patch. He was amazed that Mandy just expected him to open his door and welcome her into his arms and bed like nothing had ever happened; like she hadn�t taken the two men he respected the most in the world and hung them out to dry for everyone to read about. I didn�t have the heart to tell him that the reason she thought that he would was because he always had before.