“C’mon, Rollie, we need it!” Howie screamed at me. “Let’s go. Let’s go.”

I pecked away, the words coming as easily as if I were pounding them into a cave wall. I leaned way back and stared at my monitor. Words dug into my soul: killed, crushed, children, families, bloody, explosions. I released a long controlling breath, reminding myself I was a reporter; report it, don’t feel it. There had been a lot of bad days in the past eight years, more than I could count even if I took off my shoes, but there had been nothing as stomach-churning, black-pit awful as this day had been. I reread my words, my head shaking back and forth like I couldn’t help wondering, how the fuck did we get here?

Like so many others, I had assumed that no administration could be worse than Trump/Pence. In those days we had been thankful for the Trumpers’ ineptitude: The pit bull trainer put in charge of the pandemic response. The twenty-four-year-old college graduate running banking policy. The son-in-law who made a full-sour pickle seem warm and fuzzy apparently in charge of everything else. We used to joke about how much real damage to the country, to the world, they would have done if they had been competent. Then the pandemic came along and the laughter stopped. Then the drought and the subsequent famine.

I remember that incredible sense of relief that we had survived Trump. Well, those of us who had survived. I still have the T-shirt. Looking back on it, I am reminded of Steve McQueen’s story in The Magnificent Seven, about the guy who fell off the roof of a ten-story building; as he passed each floor, people heard him say, “So far, so good.”

Any chance Biden and Democrats had to lead the recovery had disappeared with the drought and the subsequent famine, not to mention Superstorm Malika, which had further devastated the Gulf Coast. The Democrats’ efforts always reminded me of that classic 2022 photo showing disbelief, frustration, and helplessness on Dodgers outfielder Cody Bellinger’s face as he watches Aaron Judge’s World Series–winning home run sailing into the Yankee Stadium bleachers.

As much as possible throughout my career, I’ve been an equal opportunity smart-ass. I poked at both sides equally, or in the last election all three sides. About Wrightman I had written: “Senator Wrightman’s record in the Senate has been unblemished by achievement or conviction. He established his legendary ‘independent streak’ by refusing to support controversial legislation proposed by either party. When criticized for this lack of achievement, he responded by railing against both parties for ‘their transparent efforts to silence the only truly independent voice in the Senate.’”

While John McCain had once described him as having “the depth of a puddle after a light drizzle,” he proved to be the perfect political package for the moment: a walking antidote to chaos and controversy. He was, as his campaign slogan promised, The Wrightman for the Right Time.