He certainly looked right for the part. His trim body seemed made for Italian suits, which never wrinkled as he walked; his full head of silver hair was so perfectly flaked with hints of black that Benjamin Moore might have manufactured it, and his teeth were whiter than a Trump rally.

He was a terrific politician. He smiled easily and often and had mastered the complex skill of never being caught by photographers between friendly expressions. There were no Dukakis’s head popping out of a tank or John Kerry sailboarding pictures of Ian Wrightman. He brought to mind that great Nixon political credo: Never wear a hat or stay for dinner. Early in his political career he had found the comfortable ground between self-deprecating and acceptable opinion and couldn’t be moved off it with a backhoe. He spoke in a deep and mellifluous voice that resounded with profundity; Wolf Blitzer once noted Wrightman could make a mattress label sound profound.

But mostly, Senator I. M. Wrightman understood completely that the most important skill for an American politician was to be first to be second. He never actually staked a position on an issue. Instead, he had the rare ability to catch the most desirable breeze and make it his own.

That campaign slogan was right; he probably was the right man for the time. After the daily chaos of Trump/Pence, followed by the aggressive flailing of the Democrats, more than anything else Americans craved normalcy. They wanted a decent person who had a pet and watched the same TV shows they did.

Senator Wrightman announced his independent candidacy after both parties had made their choice, claiming he was reluctantly running only because neither nominee was capable of reuniting the divided nation. As his running mate, he picked the respected former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine general Arthur T. Hunter. Wrightman’s choice of the Hun was meant to send an unambiguous message to our allies and enemies, a list that had been jumbled during Trump, that the United States was willing and able to defend our shores, wherever in the world we decided they happened to be.

While Wrightman’s opponents made grandiose promises about restoring basic American values, uniting the country, and regaining our prestige in the world, he did no such thing. His campaign slogan was concise: “Restore Order.” It was presented as a social, economic, and diplomatic doctrine, and rather than being pinned down to any specific policies, he urged voters to define it in their own best possible way. Restore order. That allowed people to interpret it to mean whatever most appealed to them. The one thing few experts realized is that it meant exactly what it promised.

The essential feel-good highlight of his campaign had been the gleeful announcement that his and Charisma’s twenty-two-year-old daughter, America, had become engaged to a Marine combat vet who had lost an arm fighting in Afghanistan, a man she’d met while volunteering at Walter Reed. His Republican opponent, former vice president Mike Pence, who had begun wearing pre-wrinkled jeans to prove he was just an ordinary guy’s guy, had skillfully countered that by tearfully putting down his previously unknown fifteen-year-old border collie, Abraham Lincoln. He was accompanied to the vet’s office by his family and a media horde, but America Wrightman had still snared People’s cover while the photograph of a tearful Pence carrying Abe’s lifeless body was relegated to an inside quarter-page.