Ross had naturally been aware of Josh Alexander all along. Alexander, the up-and-coming star of the Democratic Party, was governor of Georgia. The old white men who ran the party had finally got it through their heads that a Northeast liberal was simply unelectable. Their only real chance of winning was to draft a Southern governor who believed in Jesus Christ. This way they could split the Bible Belt vote and steal enough red states to win it all. Alexander was the obvious choice. He was handsome, smart, and polished, and his wife’s family had more money than most third-world countries. His only drawback was his relative youth. At forty-five he was deemed a touch green, and definitely weak on foreign affairs. His early polling numbers suggested that people weren’t sure he would be a strong enough leader in the war on terror. That was where Mark Ross came in. A three-term senator from Connecticut, Ross was the new director of National Intelligence. He had a reputation as one of the more hawkish Democrats in Washington.

In a normal national election, the two men would have never ended up as running mates. This election, however, had been turned on its ear when the current president announced that he had Parkinson’s disease and would not be seeking a second term. With only a year to go before the general election, the party was caught flat-footed. The primary season was upon them and the only real candidate they had was Vice President Sherman Baxter III. Everybody, including the president, agreed that Baxter would be a disaster. He was perhaps the most marginalized vice president in the history of the republic, and that was saying a lot. The man’s approval rating in his home state of California was below thirty percent. A lot of things could have been ignored, but not that number. The party elders pulled him aside and told him it was the end of the road. Having been confronted with his limits and deficiencies for the last three years, the man did not put up a fight.