West Wing Fic: Crackpot-Day Convert
Title: Crackpot-Day Convert
Author:Kasey
Prompt: 84 - Josh introduces Big Block Of Cheese Day to the Santos administration
Fandom:West Wing
Rating:Teen-ish
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Josh-centric, genfic
Warning:Angsty, Future
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters.
Summary: Of all Leo's pet office policies, Josh made sure to keep one in particular.
He kept most of the office policies that Leo had put in place.
Part of it came from inheriting Margaret as his assistant. The woman was an eccentric creature of habit, and she didn't react well to “We're gonna do it this way from now on.” But most of it was the fact that Josh fully recognized that Leo was about a thousand times smarter and more efficient than he was, and the man had run the White House incredibly well.
The policies he didn't keep fell into two categories.
The first group of policies changed out of necessity. His relationship with President Santos was light years away from the relationship between Leo and President Bartlet. Those two had been friends for decades, and Bartlet trusted Leo to vet meetings and policy pitches before they entered the Oval Office. Santos insisted on being part of the early conversations; that meant cutting a lot of the senior-staff-and-CoS meetings in favour of meetings with the President. The open-door policy between the offices was used much more sparingly, and Josh shut the Oval Office to staff less often than Leo had.
The second group consisted of policies that had bothered, inconvenienced, or generally annoyed Josh during his time as Deputy. The amount of memos - particularly summary memos - was reduced. Two minute pitches were thrown out. He used issue grids and policy calenders, and he took a more active role in spin than Leo ever had. There was more of a decision-tree format up the chain of command, sometimes demonstrated with charts and arrows, and lateness for meetings was accepted as a fact of the job.
About 90% of the policies that Josh had proudly said he wouldn't enact were instated inside of the first year, when Josh began to realize that Leo had instituted the policy for a damn good reason, rather than for the sole purpose of cramping his deputy's style.
Then there was the policy that the new White House staff found most irritating.
“You're really doing this?” Lou asked as she passed him on her way to the Roosevelt Room.
“Yes.”
“I thought you said we were going to govern and do things.”
“We are.”
“This is a preposterous exercise, it's government camp!” she protested.
“Then start stringing beads together,” Josh replied and kept walking. He passed Sam's office just as his deputy was coming out. “You're on your way to the thing?”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “Though I've gotta say, I'm kind of surprised you're doing this.”
“Why? You always halfway liked it.”
“Yeah, but you didn't. You referred to it as 'total crackpot day.' You mocked it more than any other person.”
“I mock most things more than every other person,” Josh pointed out.
“That's a fair point, but still. Of all the things you would voluntarily bring back...Did Donna talk you into it?”
“Not exactly. But she is getting about half the first Lady's senior staff to meet with the crackpots. Margaret had to find extra assignments - shouldn't have been too hard, there are always a number of lunatic fringe organizations that meet the nonviolence requirement.”
“Josh-”
“It'll be entertaining.”
“Either entertaining or disturbing, depending on which person you meet with,” Sam allowed They reached the Roosevelt Room and Sam peeled off to go into the meeting. Josh kept walking to the next door and wove his way through the assembly of senior and junior staffers from both sides of the building.
“Good morning,” Josh said as he reached the head of the table, standing under the picture of Teddy Roosevelt. Margaret moved over a few steps to flank him, clutching the file folders that contained everyone's assignments. “President Andrew Jackson-” he started...
...and fell silent.
There were times he could feel like he had just gotten promoted further up the chain because of his hard work. There were times it didn't seem exceedingly strange that he had code-word clearance, or that Margaret was his assistant, or that Sam was working in his old office. There were even days he could trick himself into thinking he was temporarily using the office next to the Oval and that Leo was off working somewhere else, or off on another speaking tour.
And then there were other times, when he was doing something near and dear to Leo's heart and it hit him just how different things were now.
This wasn't the old White House Gang. Even though Sam and Donna and Margaret were still there, CJ and Toby were noticeably absent and these people all looked to him. As glib as he had been about overseeing 1100 White House employees when the statement suited him, it was a different type of oversight now.
It was like the first Thanksgiving he'd gone back home after his father died and he'd had to lead the blessing before the meal.
Leo was no longer around to give the Big Block of Cheese Day speech. That duty now fell to him.
Josh glanced around the room at his staff, drew in a deep breath, and began again. “President Andrew Jackson had, in the main foyer of the White House, a two-ton block of cheese.”
“And a Wheat-Thin the size of Lake Tahoe,” Donna piped up from her place against the left wall, hoping to break Josh from the Leo-less trance she was beginning to recognize too well.
A few of the staff chuckled; most of the group waited for Josh to continue with the speech. They didn't know what was coming next; they were unaware that, following the speech, their day was going to be filled with meeting a mixture of lunatics and crackpots, who would be laughed out of the office.
“This block of cheese was there for any and all who were hungry. It was there for the voiceless, it was there for the masses-”
They had no way of realizing that, by the end of the day, at least a few of them would be writing memos in support of whatever the fringe group wanted - be it a wolves-only roadway or attention to a UFO over Maui, protection for sea turtles or literally turning the world upside-down.
“And it is in that spirit that we open our doors to the people who would not ordinarily get a meeting, to groups and organizations that want our attention.”
They had no way of knowing how much Big Block of Cheese Day had worked. How right Leo's pet office policy had been. Always at least one convert, usually two or three. And a few of the past crackpots had been taken seriously, or at least gotten the White House's attention.
He looked around at the skeptical band of staffers, most of whom looked thoroughly annoyed that this was going to take a day out of their already-busy schedules. “Okay, look, I know this sounds-...you're gonna laugh at them. You're going to listen to these people tell you absolutely ridiculous things, you're going to hand them a White House pen and laugh at them for the rest of the day, but at least a few of them will get to you. Look at it this way - at least I'm not going to actually bring in the giant block of cheese and make the lobby smell like Gouda for two months.”
And, with that, another of Leo's policies came back for good.
“Margaret - hand out the assignments.”
Author:Kasey
Prompt: 84 - Josh introduces Big Block Of Cheese Day to the Santos administration
Fandom:West Wing
Rating:Teen-ish
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Josh-centric, genfic
Warning:Angsty, Future
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters.
Summary: Of all Leo's pet office policies, Josh made sure to keep one in particular.
He kept most of the office policies that Leo had put in place.
Part of it came from inheriting Margaret as his assistant. The woman was an eccentric creature of habit, and she didn't react well to “We're gonna do it this way from now on.” But most of it was the fact that Josh fully recognized that Leo was about a thousand times smarter and more efficient than he was, and the man had run the White House incredibly well.
The policies he didn't keep fell into two categories.
The first group of policies changed out of necessity. His relationship with President Santos was light years away from the relationship between Leo and President Bartlet. Those two had been friends for decades, and Bartlet trusted Leo to vet meetings and policy pitches before they entered the Oval Office. Santos insisted on being part of the early conversations; that meant cutting a lot of the senior-staff-and-CoS meetings in favour of meetings with the President. The open-door policy between the offices was used much more sparingly, and Josh shut the Oval Office to staff less often than Leo had.
The second group consisted of policies that had bothered, inconvenienced, or generally annoyed Josh during his time as Deputy. The amount of memos - particularly summary memos - was reduced. Two minute pitches were thrown out. He used issue grids and policy calenders, and he took a more active role in spin than Leo ever had. There was more of a decision-tree format up the chain of command, sometimes demonstrated with charts and arrows, and lateness for meetings was accepted as a fact of the job.
About 90% of the policies that Josh had proudly said he wouldn't enact were instated inside of the first year, when Josh began to realize that Leo had instituted the policy for a damn good reason, rather than for the sole purpose of cramping his deputy's style.
Then there was the policy that the new White House staff found most irritating.
“You're really doing this?” Lou asked as she passed him on her way to the Roosevelt Room.
“Yes.”
“I thought you said we were going to govern and do things.”
“We are.”
“This is a preposterous exercise, it's government camp!” she protested.
“Then start stringing beads together,” Josh replied and kept walking. He passed Sam's office just as his deputy was coming out. “You're on your way to the thing?”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “Though I've gotta say, I'm kind of surprised you're doing this.”
“Why? You always halfway liked it.”
“Yeah, but you didn't. You referred to it as 'total crackpot day.' You mocked it more than any other person.”
“I mock most things more than every other person,” Josh pointed out.
“That's a fair point, but still. Of all the things you would voluntarily bring back...Did Donna talk you into it?”
“Not exactly. But she is getting about half the first Lady's senior staff to meet with the crackpots. Margaret had to find extra assignments - shouldn't have been too hard, there are always a number of lunatic fringe organizations that meet the nonviolence requirement.”
“Josh-”
“It'll be entertaining.”
“Either entertaining or disturbing, depending on which person you meet with,” Sam allowed They reached the Roosevelt Room and Sam peeled off to go into the meeting. Josh kept walking to the next door and wove his way through the assembly of senior and junior staffers from both sides of the building.
“Good morning,” Josh said as he reached the head of the table, standing under the picture of Teddy Roosevelt. Margaret moved over a few steps to flank him, clutching the file folders that contained everyone's assignments. “President Andrew Jackson-” he started...
...and fell silent.
There were times he could feel like he had just gotten promoted further up the chain because of his hard work. There were times it didn't seem exceedingly strange that he had code-word clearance, or that Margaret was his assistant, or that Sam was working in his old office. There were even days he could trick himself into thinking he was temporarily using the office next to the Oval and that Leo was off working somewhere else, or off on another speaking tour.
And then there were other times, when he was doing something near and dear to Leo's heart and it hit him just how different things were now.
This wasn't the old White House Gang. Even though Sam and Donna and Margaret were still there, CJ and Toby were noticeably absent and these people all looked to him. As glib as he had been about overseeing 1100 White House employees when the statement suited him, it was a different type of oversight now.
It was like the first Thanksgiving he'd gone back home after his father died and he'd had to lead the blessing before the meal.
Leo was no longer around to give the Big Block of Cheese Day speech. That duty now fell to him.
Josh glanced around the room at his staff, drew in a deep breath, and began again. “President Andrew Jackson had, in the main foyer of the White House, a two-ton block of cheese.”
“And a Wheat-Thin the size of Lake Tahoe,” Donna piped up from her place against the left wall, hoping to break Josh from the Leo-less trance she was beginning to recognize too well.
A few of the staff chuckled; most of the group waited for Josh to continue with the speech. They didn't know what was coming next; they were unaware that, following the speech, their day was going to be filled with meeting a mixture of lunatics and crackpots, who would be laughed out of the office.
“This block of cheese was there for any and all who were hungry. It was there for the voiceless, it was there for the masses-”
They had no way of realizing that, by the end of the day, at least a few of them would be writing memos in support of whatever the fringe group wanted - be it a wolves-only roadway or attention to a UFO over Maui, protection for sea turtles or literally turning the world upside-down.
“And it is in that spirit that we open our doors to the people who would not ordinarily get a meeting, to groups and organizations that want our attention.”
They had no way of knowing how much Big Block of Cheese Day had worked. How right Leo's pet office policy had been. Always at least one convert, usually two or three. And a few of the past crackpots had been taken seriously, or at least gotten the White House's attention.
He looked around at the skeptical band of staffers, most of whom looked thoroughly annoyed that this was going to take a day out of their already-busy schedules. “Okay, look, I know this sounds-...you're gonna laugh at them. You're going to listen to these people tell you absolutely ridiculous things, you're going to hand them a White House pen and laugh at them for the rest of the day, but at least a few of them will get to you. Look at it this way - at least I'm not going to actually bring in the giant block of cheese and make the lobby smell like Gouda for two months.”
And, with that, another of Leo's policies came back for good.
“Margaret - hand out the assignments.”