JOHN SMITH FOR PRESIDENt

January 1, 2018. New York City. Eric Weygand is thirty-three, single, usually votes Democratic, and went to Stanford where he played some basketball. People often tell him that he looks like a young Christopher Walken. He doesn't see it and believes Mr. Walken wouldn't either. Eric's an investigative journalist when the work comes in. He's also been a reporter for newspapers, writes magazine articles, usually on politics, has written a few books mostly on the same subject, and has a political blog with some followers. Eric's also been a guest on some cable TV news shows.

He heard a rumor about a rich Democratic donor named Egbert Romand who was looking to recruit United States Senator John Smith as a 2020 presidential candidate. Eric chatted with Mister Romand at political functions over the past few years and found him to be open and helpful, giving out as much information as he could afford to reveal. Eric interviewed Senator Smith for a magazine article a year earlier. Since his wife was back in Cleveland at the time, the senator asked Eric to have dinner with him at a local Washington restaurant. He found the senator to be a regular guy who took a drink and liked to laugh and talk politics and sports.

Before going down to see Bert Romand, Eric did some reminder research on Senator John Smith and his wife Pamela. John is from Akron, Ohio. He's fifty-five years old, six-four, a former college athlete at the U.S. Naval Academy, a fighter pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan, a graduate of Yale University Law School who later interned for a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. After which John joined a Cleveland law firm where four years later he became a full equity partner.

Before being elected to the senate in 2016, John Smith served three terms as a representative in the U.S. Congress. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in a difficult race against a lot of Republican money, and has subsequently served as a member of the Senate Appropriations, Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees.

He's married to Pamela Johnson Smith who grew up in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania. She's fifty-three, a Brown graduate, Fulbright Scholar and now a full professor of political science at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Sources have told Eric that despite being middle-age Pamela Smith is rated by the gossip columnists as one of Washington's top beauties. She loves her husband, and despite being miles apart they see each other most every weekend. Since she is his go-to political adviser, they talk or text several times most days. Pamela is not sure she wants John to run for president. She believes he would be a great one, but the prospect of campaigning and living on the road for months is daunting for both of them. She told one reporter, "If John ever wants to run, I'll be there for him one-hundred percent, and please forgive the cliché."

John and Pamela Smith, who are kiddingly referred to as Jack and Jackie, have two children: Steven, a chip off the old block, practices public-interest law in Atlanta. Amy, who is five-nine and looks like her mother's twin sister, is studying at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, plans a career in public service and is dating an English Duke's son.

January 8, 2018. Eric went to see Mr. Romand, the Democratic Party donor, in Tuscaloosa Alabama. He and his wife lived in a long ranch house. She was out caring for grandchildren. Nothing overdone about the house, but comfortable and down-home on several acres with a horse barn and chickens clucking in the backyard. Bert's a good old boy, folksy, average height, thick neck, shoulders and forearms like a blacksmith, bit of a paunch, baldheaded, toothy grin.

Leading Eric to a room across the hall, "Come sit down and we'll visit for a while." They sat across from each other on straight chairs in a pleasant home office. Extending his arms, Bert said, "Welcome to Tuscaloosa. Good business town on the Black Warrior River, sunrise side of the Piedmont." He pointed, "Everything east of here drains to the Atlantic. Also, we're hometown of the Crimson Tide. Little bit nuts about football in these parts.