Bartlet's Rally Folding Chair

Bartlet veers abruptly toward a folding chair parked on the asphalt outside Columbia High School, collapses into its metal-framed seat with canvas webbing straining under his weight, and hunches over scattered speech pages. Legs splay open with a metallic scrape; the chair rocks faintly as he scratches final revisions, isolation carving deep lines into his face while Leo lingers nearby, tension humming in the air before tomorrow's crowd crashes in.