Forging America: My Campaign Manager is Roosevelt-Chapter 108 - 74: Simulation

The prefabricated office was transformed within twenty-four hours.

The desk, once piled high with documents, had been moved to a corner.

A space had been cleared in the center of the room, now occupied by two lecterns.

This was the "debate simulation room" Karen Miller had created for Leo.

Although Karen and Ethan had both thought that accepting a debate with no script was a risky move, as professional political consultants, once their boss made a decision, they immediately shelved all their doubts. They shifted to executing that decision in the most professional manner possible.

Karen sat behind a monitor, a stopwatch in her hand.

Her gaze was more piercing than any spotlight.

Standing opposite Leo was a middle-aged man.

He wore the exact same dark blue suit as Mayor Carter Wright, had the same hairstyle, and even perfectly mimicked the arrogant expression unique to a bureaucrat.

This was a professional specialty actor Karen had paid a hefty sum to hire from Washington.

He had only one job: for the next five days, he would play Martin Carter Wright. He would use the most scathing and vitriolic language to attack Leo, to provoke Leo, until Leo developed a physiological immunity to his face.

Next to Leo stood another man, wearing a tight black T-shirt and rimless glasses.

He was another expert Karen had hired—a body language specialist from a top Washington PR firm.

"Begin!"

Karen pressed the stopwatch.

The specialty actor instantly got into character. He leaned forward, gripping the lectern, and asked in a highly aggressive tone.

"Mr. Wallace, you keep talking about revitalizing the economy, but according to last year’s report from the Municipal Finance Bureau, Pittsburgh’s municipal deficit has reached a historic high. So, how do you plan to balance this budget without cutting public services? Where is the specific data to support your plan?"

Leo took a deep breath, his mind racing.

Ethan had crammed his head with massive amounts of data over the past two days.

"According to the previous financial reports, our deficit is mainly due to..."

"Stop!"

The body language expert suddenly shouted, interrupting Leo.

He held a pointer, aimed at Leo’s eyes.

"Mr. Wallace, in the first three seconds of your answer, you blinked four times."

The expert’s voice was cold and harsh.

"On camera, frequent blinking indicates nervousness. It suggests you’re lying or that you’re not confident in your answer."

"The audience won’t hear what numbers you’re saying. They’ll just see that you’re panicking."

"Again! Control the muscles around your eyes. Stare straight into the camera. Don’t blink!"

Leo rubbed his sore eyes and straightened his posture.

"Begin!"

The specialty actor attacked again.

"Mr. Wallace, your so-called worker cooperative plan has been criticized by economists as a form of inefficient egalitarianism. How do you respond to this criticism?"

Leo raised his hand, trying to add emphasis to his tone. "This isn’t just a matter of efficiency, it’s about..."

"Stop!"

The expert called a halt again.

He walked over, grabbed Leo’s arm, and forced his open palm into a hand chop position.

"Don’t wave your hands around! You look like a drowning man calling for help!"

"Be forceful! Chop downwards! This signifies decisiveness! It signifies power! It signifies that you are in control of the situation!"

"And your expression, it’s too stiff!"

The expert poked the corner of Leo’s mouth with his finger.

"Smile! In this goddamn studio, you must always be smiling! Voters don’t like to see a long, miserable face."

"But don’t show your gums, that looks stupid. Show eight teeth. It’s called the ’Presidential smile.’ Practice in front of a mirror!"

For the entire day, Leo felt like he was no longer a person.

He had become a robot being reprogrammed. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Ethan Hawke sat nearby, continuously tossing him index cards covered in data for attacks and defenses.

"The manufacturing unemployment rate curve in Pittsburgh for the past twenty years?"

"It was 4.5% twenty years ago, soared to 11% ten years ago, and fell back to 7.2% last year. But that’s after an adjustment in statistical methodology. The actual unemployment rate is still over 9%," Leo recited mechanically.

"The minority population percentage in the third city council district?"

"35%, of which 28% are African American."

"If Carter Wright attacks your funding sources for being opaque, which law do you cite to counter him?"

"The Federation Election Law’s exemption clause for small-dollar donations."

Data, data, and more data.

Posture, posture, and more posture.

Leo’s brain was stuffed with tedious numbers, and his muscle memory was being forcibly corrected.

Ten straight hours of high-intensity simulation. No breaks, no lunch, only black coffee and energy bars.

By ten o’clock at night, when the specialty actor once again threw out a complex question about "the impact of real estate tax rate adjustments on small and medium-sized businesses"...

Leo froze.

His mind went blank. All the damn data was a tangled mess.

He paused for one second, then two.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!"

Karen slammed her notebook down on the table.

"Leo! What are you doing? Are you spacing out?"

Karen walked to the lectern and stared at him sternly.

"On live television, a two-second silence is death! You’re telling tens of thousands of viewers that you’re an idiot, that you have no idea what you’re talking about!"

"If this is the best you can do, then let’s not even bother going on Sunday. We might as well just announce you’re dropping out and save ourselves the public humiliation!"

Leo felt a wave of dizziness.

His shirt was soaked with sweat, sticking coldly to his back.

His legs felt as heavy as lead, and his throat burned.

He collapsed into a chair, his eyes vacant, gasping for breath.

He felt like he was about to break.

This "scientific" training method was sucking the soul out of him, bit by bit, turning him into a puppet who could only recite data and strike poses.

Just then, a voice echoed from the depths of his mind. It was Roosevelt.

"Thinking of giving up, Leo?"

Franklin Roosevelt’s voice was calm, tinged with an elder’s concern.

"If you walk out of this room right now, no one will blame you. You’ve already done more than enough. Even a professional politician would crack under this kind of intense training. Go home. Get a good night’s sleep."

Leo remained slumped in the chair, his heart pounding violently.

’Give up?’

’All I have to do is nod, and this suffocating feeling will disappear.’

But then he remembered Frank’s calloused hands, the image of Margaret being pushed to the ground, and the eyes of those who chose to believe in him even in the freezing wind.

More importantly, Leo suddenly realized something.

The bridge to his past had long since been burned.

The student version of Leo, the one who could only sit in front of a computer and criticize the world from afar, had died the moment he decided to make a deal with Morganfield, the moment he decided to reach for power in Washington.

Now, he was walking a tightrope of power.

One step back was not a clear path ahead, but a bottomless abyss.

He had already tasted the flavor of wielding power and witnessed its ugly side. He couldn’t go back.

’No.’

Leo gritted his teeth and replied in his mind, his voice filled with a desperate resolve.

’I’ve come this far. There’s a cliff behind me and a mountain of knives ahead.’

’Whether it’s for the people behind me or for myself... I have no way out.’

’How could I possibly give up?’

"Good." A hint of relief was in Roosevelt’s voice. "Only when you realize you have no retreat can you truly master this skill."

"This is modern politics, my boy. It’s a precise science, a performance of control."

"It may be boring, and it may be cruel, but it’s a threshold you must cross."

Then, Roosevelt’s tone lightened as he started to joke.

"Hey, look on the bright side. At least they’re only making you control your blinking. They’re not making you stand and chat casually with steel braces strapped to your legs, like I had to."

"Trust me, compared to smiling through nerve pain at that damned Yalta Conference, what you’re going through is a vacation."

"Besides, that annoying little expert with the glasses was right about one thing—the way you were blinking just now really did make you look like a startled rabbit."

The corner of Leo’s mouth twitched involuntarily. The heavy, suffocating feeling dissipated somewhat amidst Roosevelt’s teasing.

"Alright, break time is over."

Roosevelt’s voice became forceful again.

"Get up. Continue."

"Don’t complain about these rules. Adapt to them, master them. Let this pain polish you, forge you from a rough piece of iron ore into a sharp steel blade."

"Only then can you grow into a true leader."

Leo took a deep, shuddering breath.

The burning in his lungs subsided, and he forcibly suppressed the feeling that he was on the verge of breaking down.

He lifted his head and looked at Karen, who wore a grim expression and seemed ready for him to announce he was quitting. He looked at the expert, who was still chattering on about correcting his posture, and at Ethan, who was still clutching the stack of data cards.

Leo placed his hands on his knees and slowly pushed himself up.

He straightened his disheveled collar and re-fastened the button that had made him feel like he was suffocating.

Then, he reached out and took the thick stack of attack-and-defense data cards from Ethan’s hand.

"Ethan, give me another five minutes to memorize this set of data."

"Karen, tell the expert to get ready. We’re starting over."

"That last one didn’t count."

Leo stared directly into the camera lens, the last trace of weakness in his eyes completely erased.

"This time, I will control my eyes."

"I will show everyone in Pittsburgh that the man standing on that stage is an unassailable mayor."