And then he follows it up with "there are a lot of people who will think of you as a hero; but I don't want you to imagine, not even for a moment, that I am one of them". And there you have it. The argument about nature, not individual actions; about the ideas of each other.

To this day, this line guts me with its precision.

You really should write this Toby fic, I would beta it for you. For some reason, what happens to Toby is not very popular within the fandom, mainly because Richard Schiff himself didn't believe Toby would ever have gone this far. (Even though it seems patently obvious to me that he would and did. But I'm also fond of the conspiracy theory which says he was covering for Leo, even if you then have to explain why Leo leaked it.)

I'm pretty sure the reason there's no fic goes deeper though; you have to be a nutty author to be the one who wants to take on the relationship between Toby and Jed, ;)

I thought it was VERY obvious what was being paralleled in S6 and S7, but I am both an astute watcher of American politics AND a Barack Obama fan. *g*

I also can't help suspecting that CJ's promotion after Leo's heart attack was solely in service of Josh's storyline - if Josh had been promoted to Leo's position, he couldn't have credibly quit to become Santos' campaign manager - instead of being a follow-up to her own.

Am I imagining it, or doesn't Leo flat out say that was his reasoning behind the decision at a certain point in the series. It could be just some fic, but I'm fairly sure they actually say it in canon. Anyway, all's well that ends well with CJ, even though they did sorely test me on liking her for several seasons. I will always like how she ends up with Danny and the graceful parting scene between her and Toby.