Words and the Men (West Wing, Fanfiction)
Dec. 7th, 2008 07:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakTitle: Words and the Men
Disclaimer: Characters and situations owned by Aaron Sorkin and John Wells.
Characters: Toby Ziegler, Jed Bartlet
Spoilers: All seven seasons.
Summary: A politician and his speechwriter, and things that happen over time. Four glimpses.
Thanks and blame to:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skywaterblue, for beta-reading and encouraging, and kangeiko, for insisting as well. This isn't yet the post-series story we talked about, but a first attempt at the relationship.
Words and the Men
I.
In all his years as a political operative, Toby Ziegler has never participated in a successful campaign. He doesn’t count the campaigns which were successful but from which he was fired long before that final goal was reached. When the Governor of New Hampshire can’t remember his name during campaign staff meetings, Toby takes some perverse satisfaction out of that. It’s a sign he’ll soon get fired, which means the campaign will succeed, and he really wants it to. Not because he likes the Governor that much, but because he can see the man’s potential.
He doesn’t get fired. As the weeks go by, he finds out that the failure to remember his name wasn’t personal. Some quirk in Jed Bartlet’s mind allows him to remember Roman recipes for fish soup, in Latin, but not the names of the people around him, not for a good while. He does it to everyone; Toby hadn’t been an exception, but the rule. Realizing this, Toby feels insulted, so much that he considers quitting.
Then he has his first real argument with the Governor, about the Governor improvising a Thomas Paine quote in the middle of Toby’s carefully drafted speech where it has no place. “You can’t do that,” Toby says. “It destroys the rhythm, the entire cadence. It’s barbaric, and you know it.”
The Governor is a small man, and when not holding speeches, he’s usually soft spoken. But for the first time, his entire attention is focused on Toby, and while he still doesn’t raise his voice, there is nothing of that gentle, absent-minded professor attitude he often affects in private here.
“Do I detect a sense of professional jealousy?” Bartlet replies, removing his glasses, sounding sardonic.
“No, a sense of offended aesthetics,” Toby says, but the Governor isn’t entirely wrong. He would have given his right arm to have written some of Paine’s phrases, and can quote most of the first Crisis pamphlet by heart. So, evidently, can Jed Bartlet. “You threw my speech off balance because you couldn’t resist showing off,” Toby continues.
An hour later, they’re still arguing, though the argument has shifted to whether or not Thomas Paine had been right to accuse George Washington of abandoning him, of abandoning his principles. The rest of the staff has returned to talking about polls and campaign strategies, but Toby doesn’t notice.
He has also forgotten that he wanted to quit.
II.
All the speeches ever held by the President during eight years in the White House are indexed and filed somewhere, both in electronic and printed form, with the names of the main speechwriters on them, which isn’t how they arrive at Jed’s desk, and definitely not how they show up on the teleprompter. Will Bailey, during his first days in the White House, says something about the relationship between writer and orator, how it takes a while for the writer to get a sense of the person he’s writing for, to get a grasp on the voice. Jed thinks the reverse is true as well, though more difficult. He’s reasonably good at recognizing authors just by a few sentences if he’s familiar with their style, and sometimes he distracts himself by trying to figure out who contributed what to the manuscripts he’s given; which paragraphs are pure Toby, which are Sam, which are Will, which gags are the contributions of some other member of the writing staff. It’s a truly challenging puzzle, not least because any given speech is supposed to have a cohesive style, not to be read as a collection of fragments, and that style is the one people hear when they’re listening to his own voice.
Back in his days as a congressman, he started out by writing his own speeches, and quite aside from content, he thinks they sounded different from the lectures he delivered as a professor because these were two voices, two Jed Bartlets. They needed to be. The idea of professional speechwriters managing to form something that professes unity intrigues and disquiets him, especially when Toby does it, because Toby knows better, and that, too, is disturbing at times. Toby isn’t Leo, or Abbey; they haven’t known each other for decades. Toby isn’t Danny Concannon, either, who for his biography of Abbey that got written during the campaign was granted hours of interviews about the early days, complete with family photo albums. And yet Toby is the one who keeps coming up with statements about Jed that are either too insightful or manage to miss the mark just a tiny but significant bit. These statements are all delivered with the same mixture of flair and precision that marks Toby’s speeches, and there you have the presumption summed up, that claim to his mind as well as his voice, as if either could now only exist as expressed in Toby Ziegler’s penmanship.
When CJ tells him Toby is the leak, he doesn’t lie when he says he’s not surprised. In fact, he doesn’t doubt it for a second. He has learned to identify Toby as an author.
III.
The Indian chess set isn’t the first gift Toby receives from the President, though it is probably the one he uses most often. The rest are mostly books, a fate he shares with the rest of the senior staff, though in his case it’s not a little satisfying to know the President can never be sure he hasn’t already read them, even something as ecletic as Spinoza’s Tractatus de intellectus emendatione.
The last gift is the pardon. He would never have asked for it, and he is not grateful for it. Instead, he finds it infinitely infuriating, and not just because he found out about it through a news reporter who has managed to get hold of his cell number and asks him about his reaction. Toby hangs up, but it’s not too long before a copy of the document itself is delivered. Barren, clumsy phrases, from someone in the Attorney General’s office who manages to excel in legal lifelessness, and then that signature, Josiah E. Bartlet, which Leo’s secretary Margaret once said was easy to fake. Something interchangeable.
He had no right to make something like that the last word, Toby thinks, and wishes for a shredder. Alternatively, a lighter would do, except that instead of burning the damned thing he keeps staring at it and starts to wonder about a redraft.
IV.
The White House staff does most of the packing. A lot of the books and papers will eventually end up in the soon to be build Presidential library. He might not be able to revisit them for much longer anyway, if last year’s episodes repeat themselves. At least something like the inability to see a flag won’t endanger diplomatic relations again, but Jed hates the idea of being unable to read anymore as much as he hated the paralysis of his hands and legs. Audiobooks are all very well, but not only are they usually some patronizing reader’s digests edition of the real thing, but whoever reads them presumes to dictate the pace at which the book in question should be experienced. It’s almost as much a loss of a control he has taken for granted as being carried like a child by the redoubtable Curtis had been.
There are two documents which won’t be among the official papers, and he hasn’t let anyone else file or pack them anywhere, either, because only two people have ever seen them. He keeps them in his edition of Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics, which he can be reasonably be sure Abbey will never look into, or any of the girls. And a good thing, too, because reading one of them would upset them too much.
The first document is the one speech written for him which was he wasn’t supposed to know about. The speech in the case of Zoey’s death, which he made Toby give him that night, just before they found her, because if your own words, ordering murder for the greater good, have condemned your child to suffer for your sins you really need to know there is a reason not to remain silent for the rest of your life. When Zoey was rescued, that speech was redrafted, and that was the version everyone knew, but he has kept the original.
The other document might yet end up in the Library, he’s not sure. His initial fury has burned itself out, but he knows himself too well not to assume there isn’t something still left lingering beneath the ashes and the regret. Besides, the words feel too personal, but then, that was always the problem. In any case, he has put it together with the speech. It’s a note he received from Toby after apologizing to his staff for the lawyers, the press, the mess, the fear that had followed the weeks after they had made his MS public. Hand written, nothing but a quote he recognized at once, Thomas Paine’s first Crisis manifesto:
These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
He wanted to leave it behind in Washington, he truly did, but he is not able to let go of that note.
Disclaimer: Characters and situations owned by Aaron Sorkin and John Wells.
Characters: Toby Ziegler, Jed Bartlet
Spoilers: All seven seasons.
Summary: A politician and his speechwriter, and things that happen over time. Four glimpses.
Thanks and blame to:
skywaterblue, for beta-reading and encouraging, and kangeiko, for insisting as well. This isn't yet the post-series story we talked about, but a first attempt at the relationship.Words and the Men
I.
In all his years as a political operative, Toby Ziegler has never participated in a successful campaign. He doesn’t count the campaigns which were successful but from which he was fired long before that final goal was reached. When the Governor of New Hampshire can’t remember his name during campaign staff meetings, Toby takes some perverse satisfaction out of that. It’s a sign he’ll soon get fired, which means the campaign will succeed, and he really wants it to. Not because he likes the Governor that much, but because he can see the man’s potential.
He doesn’t get fired. As the weeks go by, he finds out that the failure to remember his name wasn’t personal. Some quirk in Jed Bartlet’s mind allows him to remember Roman recipes for fish soup, in Latin, but not the names of the people around him, not for a good while. He does it to everyone; Toby hadn’t been an exception, but the rule. Realizing this, Toby feels insulted, so much that he considers quitting.
Then he has his first real argument with the Governor, about the Governor improvising a Thomas Paine quote in the middle of Toby’s carefully drafted speech where it has no place. “You can’t do that,” Toby says. “It destroys the rhythm, the entire cadence. It’s barbaric, and you know it.”
The Governor is a small man, and when not holding speeches, he’s usually soft spoken. But for the first time, his entire attention is focused on Toby, and while he still doesn’t raise his voice, there is nothing of that gentle, absent-minded professor attitude he often affects in private here.
“Do I detect a sense of professional jealousy?” Bartlet replies, removing his glasses, sounding sardonic.
“No, a sense of offended aesthetics,” Toby says, but the Governor isn’t entirely wrong. He would have given his right arm to have written some of Paine’s phrases, and can quote most of the first Crisis pamphlet by heart. So, evidently, can Jed Bartlet. “You threw my speech off balance because you couldn’t resist showing off,” Toby continues.
An hour later, they’re still arguing, though the argument has shifted to whether or not Thomas Paine had been right to accuse George Washington of abandoning him, of abandoning his principles. The rest of the staff has returned to talking about polls and campaign strategies, but Toby doesn’t notice.
He has also forgotten that he wanted to quit.
II.
All the speeches ever held by the President during eight years in the White House are indexed and filed somewhere, both in electronic and printed form, with the names of the main speechwriters on them, which isn’t how they arrive at Jed’s desk, and definitely not how they show up on the teleprompter. Will Bailey, during his first days in the White House, says something about the relationship between writer and orator, how it takes a while for the writer to get a sense of the person he’s writing for, to get a grasp on the voice. Jed thinks the reverse is true as well, though more difficult. He’s reasonably good at recognizing authors just by a few sentences if he’s familiar with their style, and sometimes he distracts himself by trying to figure out who contributed what to the manuscripts he’s given; which paragraphs are pure Toby, which are Sam, which are Will, which gags are the contributions of some other member of the writing staff. It’s a truly challenging puzzle, not least because any given speech is supposed to have a cohesive style, not to be read as a collection of fragments, and that style is the one people hear when they’re listening to his own voice.
Back in his days as a congressman, he started out by writing his own speeches, and quite aside from content, he thinks they sounded different from the lectures he delivered as a professor because these were two voices, two Jed Bartlets. They needed to be. The idea of professional speechwriters managing to form something that professes unity intrigues and disquiets him, especially when Toby does it, because Toby knows better, and that, too, is disturbing at times. Toby isn’t Leo, or Abbey; they haven’t known each other for decades. Toby isn’t Danny Concannon, either, who for his biography of Abbey that got written during the campaign was granted hours of interviews about the early days, complete with family photo albums. And yet Toby is the one who keeps coming up with statements about Jed that are either too insightful or manage to miss the mark just a tiny but significant bit. These statements are all delivered with the same mixture of flair and precision that marks Toby’s speeches, and there you have the presumption summed up, that claim to his mind as well as his voice, as if either could now only exist as expressed in Toby Ziegler’s penmanship.
When CJ tells him Toby is the leak, he doesn’t lie when he says he’s not surprised. In fact, he doesn’t doubt it for a second. He has learned to identify Toby as an author.
III.
The Indian chess set isn’t the first gift Toby receives from the President, though it is probably the one he uses most often. The rest are mostly books, a fate he shares with the rest of the senior staff, though in his case it’s not a little satisfying to know the President can never be sure he hasn’t already read them, even something as ecletic as Spinoza’s Tractatus de intellectus emendatione.
The last gift is the pardon. He would never have asked for it, and he is not grateful for it. Instead, he finds it infinitely infuriating, and not just because he found out about it through a news reporter who has managed to get hold of his cell number and asks him about his reaction. Toby hangs up, but it’s not too long before a copy of the document itself is delivered. Barren, clumsy phrases, from someone in the Attorney General’s office who manages to excel in legal lifelessness, and then that signature, Josiah E. Bartlet, which Leo’s secretary Margaret once said was easy to fake. Something interchangeable.
He had no right to make something like that the last word, Toby thinks, and wishes for a shredder. Alternatively, a lighter would do, except that instead of burning the damned thing he keeps staring at it and starts to wonder about a redraft.
IV.
The White House staff does most of the packing. A lot of the books and papers will eventually end up in the soon to be build Presidential library. He might not be able to revisit them for much longer anyway, if last year’s episodes repeat themselves. At least something like the inability to see a flag won’t endanger diplomatic relations again, but Jed hates the idea of being unable to read anymore as much as he hated the paralysis of his hands and legs. Audiobooks are all very well, but not only are they usually some patronizing reader’s digests edition of the real thing, but whoever reads them presumes to dictate the pace at which the book in question should be experienced. It’s almost as much a loss of a control he has taken for granted as being carried like a child by the redoubtable Curtis had been.
There are two documents which won’t be among the official papers, and he hasn’t let anyone else file or pack them anywhere, either, because only two people have ever seen them. He keeps them in his edition of Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics, which he can be reasonably be sure Abbey will never look into, or any of the girls. And a good thing, too, because reading one of them would upset them too much.
The first document is the one speech written for him which was he wasn’t supposed to know about. The speech in the case of Zoey’s death, which he made Toby give him that night, just before they found her, because if your own words, ordering murder for the greater good, have condemned your child to suffer for your sins you really need to know there is a reason not to remain silent for the rest of your life. When Zoey was rescued, that speech was redrafted, and that was the version everyone knew, but he has kept the original.
The other document might yet end up in the Library, he’s not sure. His initial fury has burned itself out, but he knows himself too well not to assume there isn’t something still left lingering beneath the ashes and the regret. Besides, the words feel too personal, but then, that was always the problem. In any case, he has put it together with the speech. It’s a note he received from Toby after apologizing to his staff for the lawyers, the press, the mess, the fear that had followed the weeks after they had made his MS public. Hand written, nothing but a quote he recognized at once, Thomas Paine’s first Crisis manifesto:
These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
He wanted to leave it behind in Washington, he truly did, but he is not able to let go of that note.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 08:21 am (UTC)And I really like your Jed-voice. He was never one of my favorites on the show, but he's an interesting, complex character whom I cannot believe is easy to write, and your take on him is believable.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 08:47 am (UTC)And I really like your Jed-voice.
Thank you. Getting voices of characters you've never written before right is tricky in any case, but if they're two of the most complex ones on the show who are masters of the English language to boot intimidated the hell out of me, and I really wanted to do them justice.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 08:22 am (UTC)What I love about your story is the way in which it deals with the relationship between speechwriters, orators, and the words that unite them. Using the Paine quote, which belongs to neither man but becomes something other than the words alone through their reading of it, was just lovely.
-Cara
P.S. First comment?!
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 08:43 am (UTC)What I love about your story is the way in which it deals with the relationship between speechwriters, orators, and the words that unite them
Thank you. That was one of the most fascinating elements of their relationship, and hence the one I focused on here. In a way, at the same time a variation of and a departure from the writer-and-muse constellation, and there is something of Robert Graves' ideas re: writers and muses there, though without the gender issues.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 10:56 am (UTC)Psst: I think canon spelling has Will's last name as "Bailey" with an E.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 11:00 am (UTC)Thank you. I'm very happy you like it, old-time fan that you are!
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 02:38 pm (UTC)I bring clips! (I)
Date: 2008-12-07 04:01 pm (UTC)This one from early in the first season comes near the end of an episode and basically sets it up for the next seven years:
The next one is from the second season. One of the good things about WW was that while their President was a basically positive character, he had genuine flaws, and he was shown to be in the wrong a couple of times (deliberately by the narrative, I mean, not just in audience perception). One of the wrong things he does is concealing he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis during the initial campaign. This is the point in the second season (equaling the second year in office) where Toby gets told about this. Bartlet doesn't react well to Toby's reaction.
By mid-season 3, the immediate political fallout from the MS crisis is mastered (though it's an ongoing plot thread), apologies were made, and the reelection plot thread starts. At this point, we get this chess game between Jed Bartlet and Toby Ziegler:
I bring clips! (II)
Date: 2008-12-07 04:02 pm (UTC)First a fun one from s1 where the President smacks down a fundie conservative talk show host who has ranted about homosexuals:
bible smack down
Next one from near the end of the show, s7, in which Bartlet (whose second term will soon be over) talks with Republican candidate, Senator Arnold Vinick (losely based on John McCain) about politics, beliefs and getting old. It's a love letter to the possibility of bipartisanship and decent interaction despite having opposing views:
Back to s2. Here's a fun scene with the First Lady, Abbey, who has a great sparring equals relationship with her husband. And yes, religion comes up again:
Jed Bartlet, I should have probably said earlier, is a Catholic of the deeply religious but constantly arguing with God type. (He wanted to become a priest before met Abbey.) His big crisis of faith comes near the end of s2, where on top of an attempted assassionation (where one of his staff was also hit and nearly died) and the MS revelation which has just become public his secretary and oldest confidant, Mrs. Landingham, whom he has known since he was a teenager, has died in a car accident. After her funeral service, we get one of the most famous scenes in the entire show and the one which got Martin Sheen an Emmy:
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 12:32 pm (UTC)A very effective series of stories.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 02:24 pm (UTC)And thank you for the feedback!
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 12:43 pm (UTC)If this is what insisting produces, I'm setting up camp outside your house with placards and a megaphone.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 02:21 pm (UTC)I'm really glad you approve, oh inspiration. An see it as in character for Jed, and for Toby. (That scene in Dogs of War in Toby's office when Jed asks "where is the other speech?", Toby, in a very rare moment of wanting to spare feelings, says "what other speech?" and Jed just looks at him until he hands it over was very much in my mind.)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 02:46 pm (UTC)deimpress? Seriously, though, writing for characters from another fandom for the first time is always intimidating, so I'm really glad it worked!no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 04:13 pm (UTC)Yup, that's it. The essence of their relationship and the cause of all their problems in a nutshell. Wonderful look at both men and, of course, Toby would want to redraft the pardon.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 04:39 pm (UTC)I loved living in Germany, so I'm sure it will be a smooth transition when I go back to attach myself to you like a limpet, so as not to miss even the slightest morsel of the magnificence that is you.
If you were to ask me CJ's question, right now, I'd give you Toby's answer: "Oh, but when don't I?"
In short -- too late! -- this was magnificent.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 09:07 pm (UTC)The Governor is a small man
You got me thinking with this line. Martin Sheen and therefore Jed Bartlet are small men but I have never thought of Jed Bartlet as small in any way. His personality overpowers them all. The line was perfect in its place, right for the way Toby's thinking about Jed changed in that moment.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 09:23 pm (UTC)Re: small: in the fifth season episode with all the ex presidents, when they had Martin Sheen walk side by side with James Cromwell I suddenly realized with a shock just how small he is. Which is funny because I have seen him in other roles pre-West Wing, but as Jed Bartlet, despite being quite often surrounded by taller people (not the size of Cromwell though! That was about the same effect as letting Allison Janney walk next to Kristin Chenowitch), he's got such a strong personality you don't notice.
Also:
Date: 2008-12-08 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 02:13 am (UTC)Now watch as I restrain myself from saying that now you're writing TWW, I am hoping you'll decide to eventually write the TWW/DW crossover we've talked about. No, I won't say a word. Not at all.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 08:35 am (UTC)This being said:
CJ: If one of their prime ministers was an alien and Queen Victoria ended up as a werewolf, does that mean some of our presidents...?
Kate Harper: That information is classified.
And hey, thank you for the compliment re: voice!
no subject
Date: 2008-12-13 02:33 am (UTC)So this would be it. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-13 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 03:40 am (UTC)and there you have the presumption summed up, that claim to his mind as well as his voice, as if either could now only exist as expressed in Toby Ziegler’s penmanship.
That is their entire relationship in line, on more than one level, Toby's presumption and his expectations and his prodding to get Bartlet to live up to those. And oh Toby's thought about the pardon as the last word between them. Just gorgeous.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 04:14 pm (UTC)In a fictional universe full of interesting relationships, the one between these two fascinated me more than any other (and I still want to do something with the idea that in a way, it's a take on the writer/muse principle), and so I just had to write about it.
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Date: 2009-01-07 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-11 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-11 03:50 pm (UTC)