I hate this, it gets didactic at the end, but I wanted to put it up. maybe will revise it.

From Seventh Sanctum’s Quick Story Generator

The theme of this story: dark character study. The main character: stressed politician. The major event of the story: failure.

What happened in the movies didn’t happen here. That’s what Mac had learned long ago, in his first year in the legislature. Lawmakers didn’t have crises of conscience on the floor and change their votes; the voices of the people didn’t get heard in a dramatic moment worthy of Capra. Vote-herding was a carefully orchestrated series of barters. You could swear to your constituents up and down that you would never vote for a bill containing entitlements, but then the leaders get you on the floor and say we’ll pass the bill you want so badly to pass but only if it’s folded up in our entitlement package. You end up breaking a promise either way. But then there will be the day when you need to do the same thing, put another guy in the same position, and if you wouldn’t play the game before ain’t nobody who’s going to play the game with you now.

So this is what he tried to tell Danny when Danny first got elected, all wet behind the ears and blushing like a kid at his first dance. Danny had preached the social justice gospel and after playing his first couple of weeks at being Elden County’s own personal Robin Hood, the leadership had sort of assigned to Mac the unenviable task of breaking him in.

Breaking in a young turk just elected by an upstart urban district was not a matter of sitting him down and explaining how the game worked. It was a months-long process, Mac knew, and it started with this – nodding sagely and leaning back with arms crossed as Danny, thrilled to have such a well-known mentor, rattled off to him his policy prescriptions for changing the whole wide world starting with his small patch of city. The kid was delusional.

“The way I see it,” he was saying, “all you’ve got to do is to identify the things that need work, and then you have the workers who can do it, and once you spur the employers into giving them a living wage and convince them that the infrastructure investments are worth your while, and you have a solution to two problems in one!” His hand swept boldly up and then to the side and down, and he knocked over his water glass with a loud chord of clinking ice.

“I will say one thing for you, Danny,” Mac said, watching the cloudy gray stain expand across the tablecloth. “You do have vision.”

“And what’s wrong with vision?” He pouted like a child. “Vision’s what people need. It’s what they ask for.”

Mac forced a chuckle. “I didn’t say anything was wrong with it, son. I said you had it. What you need now are the tools to make it work for you.”

Danny nodded emphatically. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Yes, yes, indeed.” A drop of water was hanging heavy from a corner of the tablecloth. Mac felt like he couldn’t breathe until it fell. Impatient, he grabbed it and squeezed. “Yes, indeed. That is indeed why you’re here.”

“So what do you think?” Danny said, eyeing his chicken with a slightly befuddled air. “How do you implement something like this?”

Mac tucked his napkin into his collar. It rustled against his tie. “First of all,” he said, ignoring the itch beneath his chin, “you understand that you didn’t invent this wheel.”

Fork halfway to mouth, Danny paused.

“That is,” Mac said, mouth half-full of beef, “you’re riding on a hell of a merry-go-round, son. You think we haven’t been on this horse before, but we’ve seen a lot. And those of us who haven’t seen it will pretend we have. Nobody wants to hear from a little freshman that he can do their job better than they can. You understand.”

“Then they should hear it from you,” Danny said. “You have the experience. Say this.” He got up out of his chair and wavered dangerously over the table. “Say you’ve had a crisis of faith. You understand what needs to be done now.”

This time Mac didn’t need to force the smirk. “I’m an old dog, Danny. I don’t learn new tricks.”

“Then you’re asking to be put out to pasture.” Danny folded his eyebrows into thick brown knots. He waved his hand again, and Mac had a moment of dread for the refilled water glass. “The metaphor’s wrong, but you know what I mean.”

“Change or die? That’s a mighty threat coming from you.”

“Not a threat. Just what always happens. Didn’t it happen when you were new? Old man, sitting in place as the world ran forward and just becoming irrelevant? Are you irrelevant, sir?”

Mac felt the toughness of the meat coat his throat with sour acid. He forced it down, chewing instead on his answer.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Danny went on. “I know what you’re afraid of, I know what they’re afraid of. They’re all old dogs. So afraid of getting put to sleep. Let me ask you this, sir. Did you get into this for yourself? Of course you didn’t. Then why in the hell are you going along with this stupid housebreaking plan? Because you’re afraid they’ll retaliate if you don’t. Because you’re afraid you’ll lose your seat, lose your power. That sounds pretty selfish to me. Me, I’m not afraid to lose my power. I believe I won’t. I believe in my city and my voters and my ideas. Maybe they will lead me off a cliff but I will climb back up and keep fighting and I will not fail.”

“Enough of this foolishness.” The churning in his gut had gone from bad to worse. “You talk like this, you stick to this lone-wolf garbage and you have already failed. Success takes work, son. It takes compromise and planning and it takes allies. You are lucky enough to stick around here, you’ll learn that just as I did. Learn to play the game and you might get something done.”

The wildness in Danny’s eyes vanished in an instant. “I already have,” he said, sipping his water.

Three days later, when the vote came, Danny voted with the leadership. And as he said “aye,” he turned his head and gave a slight smile. Mac hadn’t realized he’d been staring at the kid until just that moment.

He was fairly sure he’d failed at something, but he couldn’t tell what. And he was fairly sure, too, that Danny had gotten something done.