Chapter Text
The printer in the Bullpen chirped over the TV. A blonde woman furrowed her brow at the printer from her desk. ‘Huh that’s weird.’ She turned on the television.
“Capital Beat with Mark Gottfried. Tonight from the right, Republican political analyst Ainsley Hayes, and from the left, White House Senior Advisor Sam Seaborn. With Chris Eisen at the Pentagon, and Marjorie Clarke in New York." The news broadcaster announced as the panelists' headshots flashed on the screen.
"DONNA!" A man's voice bellowed from an office.
"Don't shout." She replied.
"DONNA!"
"Don't shout!"
"DONNA!"
Donna marched to his office door. "How many times have I told you not to shout?" She stared down a smug, arrogant auburn haired man.
"Ummmm….."
"Anyway Sam's about to go on Capital Beat, if you wanna come watch.”
"I was just gonna ask you about that."
'Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh. What would you do without me?' "Way ahead of you, my friend." They walked to the Bullpen.
Mark opened with, "Good evening. Before we get to Chris and Marjorie tonight on the Capital Beat, the House is expected to vote next week on President Bartlet's one point five billion dollar education package. Sam Seaborn: Why is this bill better than its Republican counterpart that the President vetoed last year?”
Sam's smile exuded smugness against the White House backdrop. "Because it buys things that teachers need, like textbooks. In a fairly comprehensive study that was done, an alarmingly high number of teachers ... forty percent... of teachers in Kirkwood, Oregon, for instance,... and Kirkwood, Oregon being a fair model for public school districts across the country ... forty percent of the teachers in Kirkwood, Oregon report not having sufficient textbooks... for their students. The package offered by the... Republican controlled Congress offered a grand total of zero dollars for new textbooks."
"That's my boy!” Josh clapped.
Donna walked to over to the printer as Mark turned to Ainsley. "Ainsley Hayes? Is that true?"
"No, it's not." Ainsley responded as she jotted down notes.
"Oh this will be good." Donna looked up, hoping to see Sam get put in his place.
Mark thought as he looked at Ainsley with her french vanilla ice cream blond hair that trailed to the floor. "Is Sam Seaborn lying?"
"Lyin’s an awfully strong word." Ainsley said as Donna unplugged the printer.
"Do you...?" Mark started to ask.
Ainsley looked up. “Yes, he’s lyin’.
”I don't...” Sam stammered.
Ainsley cut him off. “And we should tell the truth about education.”
“Well, if you're gonna call..." Sam mumbled.
"The bill contained plenty of money for new textbooks. Also computer literacy, school safety, physical plants. The difference is we wanted to give the money directly to communities, and let them decide how best to spend it, on the off-chance that the needs of Lincoln High in Dayton are different from the needs of Crenshaw High in South Central L.A."
Josh ran off to one of the office and Donna could hear Josh saying "Toby, come quick. Sam's getting his ass licked by a girl." Toby followed Josh just before he said, "Ginger, get the popcorn."
Mark addressed Sam. "Sam, why did the President veto the bill?"
"There are—"
"Because it guaranteed by law that ninety-five percent of the money go directly into the classroom and bypassed the pork-barrel buffet, which is troubling to this President because he doesn't work for the students..." Ainsley clarified.
"Well that's just..." Sam started.
Ainsley continued. "...and he doesn't work for the parents of the students. He works for the teacher's union."
"The difference with the old..." Sam started.
Ainsley cut him off. "The bill contains plenty of money for textbooks, Mark, and anyone who says otherwise is flat-out lyin’. And we should tell the truth about this. Textbooks are important, if for no other reason than they'd accurately place the town of Kirkwood in California and not in Oregon." Ainsley said.
"And we're in business. We'll be back with more Capital Beat after this." Mark said.
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The spicy-sweet aromas from Ainsley's Thai takeout dinner still lingered in the apartment at 6 am on a Thursday morning. The last few days had been a blur, between her phone that rang off the hook with people calling to congratulate her for taking down The White House Deputy Communications Director, Sam Seaborn, on the Capital Beat earlier that week and all of the people, everyone from friends she ran into to strangers who recognized her the street, who had congratulated her everywhere she went after it aired. Bruce, one of her roommates, already sent the tape to an agent he knows. Apparently she was able to make that Taylor Reid, who started out as a bartender according to Bruce, into a household name. Even Mama called, which was a surprise because she was in the middle of preparing for the Mary Margaret Foundation's Spring Fling Gala, the organization's second biggest fundraiser of the year, on top of raising her siblings and running a proper southern household. That phone call meant more to her than all of the other ones, but the biggest surprise was when the White House called.
Ainsley Hayes considered all of this as she got ready for her appointment at the White House. Figures that this administration would call her in for creaming their golden boy on national television, just minutes after she overheard him and the host, Mark Gottfried, and Sam Seaborn say that she was 'in show business' because she was a 'young, blond, leggy Republican' and that it '… turned out that they didn't know anything.' And to top all that off was Mark Gottfried's display of mansplaining when he told her "Don't overreach ….. Don't try to do too much. Don't try to know more than you do. My show is not the place or you to become a star… You'll be opposite Sam Seaborn. He's done the show a couple dozen times; the White House wouldn't keep sending him if he didn't keep wiping the floor with whoever's in your chair." Little did he know he was talking to Ainsley Hayes, who had been defying expectations her whole life.
As bizarre as it seemed for the White House administration to call her so they could reprimand her for beating Sam Seaborn on TV, she could not think of another explanation for them to do so. Well God help the poor souls who dared to harass a member of the Hayes family, even if it was the White House. Between Mama and Daddy, but especially Mama, the White House would have so many lawsuits that Bartlet probably would not be able to run for reelection.
After she finished her eggs and brushed her teeth at 7:30 am, she grabbed a hazelnut latte and a peach muffin with cream cheese at the coffee shop below her Alexandria apartment and caught a cab to the White House. And as insane the last few days had been, none of that compared with what came next.
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As The White House Chief of Staff's Secretary, Margaret, escorted her out of the office, the whirlwind of the events that had occurred over the course of the week were replaced with Leo McGarry, the White House Chief of Staff, offering her a job and then later concluding with, "The President likes smart people… who disagree with him. He wants to hear from you. The President's asking you to serve. And everything else is crap."
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As the daylight outside faded, darkening the room, Sam's blue eyes gazed at her for a moment as she studied a picture on the wall outside Leo's office. "Hi."
She spun around and said, "Hi."
She resumed studying the picture for a moment as he checked his watch and sat on the edge of the desk. They hung there in the awkward silence again for a few more moments, when he took a deep breath and said "…You know, something you forgot to mention about the 95 percent of the money going straight into the classroom and past the pork-barrel buffet, is that the school only got the money if they agreed not to distribute condoms."
With just a hint of sarcasm, she said, "Well that's a reason to veto it, because the thing our public schools need more than anything else right now are free condoms. I'd... definitely make that priority one."
Josh, who also had auburn hair, swaggered in. "Hey, Sam."
"Hey."
"Where's Leo?"
"He's not here." She answered.
Josh paused for a moment and quizzically said, "You look familiar to me." And then, in a mock hillbilly, Southern accent, he said, "You're Aimsley Hayes!"
"Ainsley, uh, with an 'n'." Ainsley politely corrected, no longer phased by northerners' preconceived notions of southerners, especially when the southerner in question is a female republican. But when that female republican is a retired Naval Intelligence officer with JD-MBA from Harvard, a Bachelor's in Foreign Affairs and Economics with a double minor in Arabic and Chinese from Smith College, their preconceived notions are thrown for a tailspin.
"She works here now." Sam said, exasperated.
"What?" Josh inquired with confusion.
"Leo hired her." Sam spat.
"What're you talking about?" He slightly tilted his head.
"Leo hired her." Sam repeated with bitter emphasis. "Leo hired her. He told me and C.J., he was waiting to tell you and Toby."
Josh paused, his brow furrowing in confusion. "What was he waiting for?"
"How the hell do I know, Josh?" Josh and Ainsley could taste the bitterness in Sam's words as he threw up his hands.
Ainsley calmly explained. "Waitin' until he … hired me, which he hasn't done, 'cause I'm not takin’ the job."
Josh raised his eyebrows and creased his forehead in shock. "You're not taking the job?"
"No." Ainsley replied, and then in true Southern Belle fashion, she sweetly said "But thank you for talkin’ to me, instead of about me." as Sam flinched.
"Hang on, I'm still back on… he offered you the job, but you're not taking the job?" Josh said, taken aback.
"No, man, why participate in the process when you can get a job commenting on it?" Sam walked to the doorway.
"You think because I don't want to work here it's because I can get a better gig on Geraldo?" Ainsley said, shocked. "Gosh, let's see… if there could possibly be any other reason why I wouldn't want to work in this White House? ... This White House that feels that government is better for children than parents are. … That looks at forty years of degrading and humiliating free lunches handed out in a spectacularly failed effort to level the playin’ field and says, 'Let's try forty more.' … This White House that says of anyone that points that out to them, that they are cold … and mean … and racist, … and then accuses Republicans of usin’ the politics of fear. … This White House that loves the Bill of Rights,… all of them… except the second one."
Sam's eyes went ablaze with blue fire as he spoke in a soft, livid tone in regards to the shooting at Rosslyn that had happened two months ago. "…This is the wrong place to talk about guns right now. I thought your column was idiotic."
Ainsley replied. "Imagine my surprise."
Sam's emotions escalated as he stepped towards her. "But for a brilliant surgical team and two centimeters of a miracle, this guy's dead right now. From bullets fired from a gun bought legally. They bought guns, they loaded them, they drove from Wheeling to Rosslyn, and until they pulled the trigger they had yet to commit a crime. I am so off-the-charts tired of the gun lobby tossing around words like 'personal freedom' and no one calling 'em on it. It's not about personal freedom, and it certainly has nothing to do with public safety. It's just that some people like guns."
"Yes they do." Ainsley replied. "But you know what's more insidious than that? …. Your gun control position doesn't have anything to do with public safety, and it's certainly not about personal freedom. ... It's about you don't like people who do like guns. ... You don't like the people. ... Think about that, the next time you make a joke about the South."
Toby poked his head in amidst the awkward silence as Sam stood there at complete loss for words. "Where's Leo?"
"What?" Sam asked absentmindedly, still focused on Ainsley.
"Where's Leo?"
"We don't know."
Charlie walked in to hand a piece of paper to Toby when Josh asked, "Charlie, you seen Leo?" as he handed the paper to Josh, who handed it to Sam, and with that, they headed to the Oval Office.
‘Wow this is the room where it all happens.’ Ainsley thought as she watched President Bartlet, his advisors, The Senior Staff, and President Nimbala handle the International AIDS Health Crisis from the doorway of the Oval Office. Ainsley realized that Mary Margaret would have told her to set aside her differences with this administration and to take the job because they were still patriots. Regardless of their backgrounds or ideologies, they were all Americans. As Mary Margaret, one of her sisters, always reminded her, "Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean they're bad people." And she needed to learn that lesson if she was going to be President someday.
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The restaurant's warm lighting stood in contrast with the dark, rainy night.
"Ainsley!" A curly redhead named Harriet, one of Ainsley's roommates, cheerily said as Ainsley sat down at the restaurant table.
"Hey." said the brunette man named Bruce, their other roommate, who was seated next to her.
"Bruce was just telling me."
"I couldn't resist." Bruce giddily piped in.
"He said they tried to hire you."
Harriet said, eager to hear more.
"Tell me about the look on McGarry's face." Bruce said, his excitement building.
"What?" Ainsley asked, confused.
"When you said no."
"I,… um,… couldn't see him. He had to … he was called in to-" Ainsley began to stumble over her words as she averted their eyes.
"What's wrong?"
Ainsley shook her head. "Nothing. He had to … something happened."
"Uh, damn. I wanted you to say it to his face. I wanted to see..." Bruce interrupted as Ainsley looked towards him.
"I hate these people." Harriet added.
"Did you meet anyone there who isn't worthless?" Bruce laughed.
"Don't say that." Ainsley quietly insisted.
"Did you meet anyone there who has any-?" He continued with a smile on his face.
Ainsley cut him off. "I said don't say that. Say they're smug and superior,… say their approach to public policy makes you want to tear your hair out… Say they like high taxes and spendin’ your money… Say they want to take your guns and open your borders, but don't call them worthless. … At least don't do it in front of me."
Bruce and Harriet looked at each other in disbelief as Ainsley stood up to speak in opposition. "The people that I have met have been extraordinarily qualified, their intent is good. Their commitment is true,… they are righteous,… and they are patriots." She paused and tears welled up in her eyes as she thought back to President Nimbala and how truly privileged she is to be an American citizen. "And I'm their lawyer." She concluded with fierce conviction as she gracefully exited the restaurant, rendering them speechless.