Doug: "Mom? Not to rush you, but..."
Elaine: "...Right. Okay. I am considering running for President again..."

Margaret pushes herself back from the table; it's a gesture Elaine knows well. It's one we all know pretty well. It's the sound of T.J.'s life, rushing past. Sometimes with Bud's force, other times with Elaine's grace, but it all sounds the same.

Margaret: "Hate to be the one to burst your bubble, babe, but that ain't news."
Elaine: Can't get the words out -- what this means, where we go -- fast enough to stop her.
Margaret: "Is this the point where you ask us what we think, then you ignore what we say and do whatever you want? Because I for one prefer not to have the New York Post going through our garbage cans, counting our liquor bottles again. And I know the boys don't want to go through the hell we all barely survived two years ago, just so you can be Queen Shit of the United States of Elaineland."
Elaine: "I'll take that as a nay?"

Doug shines, admits he's agreed to be her campaign manager; T.J. thinks she's going to be the best President the family's ever had. That's when Bud arrives. Hale and hearty and full of pithy idiom; unannounced. Doug seethes; it's like just thinking of him made him appear. It was meant to be a secret.

Bud: "Hoo! It's hot as a goat's ass out there tonight!"

THROUGH TO THE KITCHEN

The boys watch their parents chuckling after dinner. It's weird. Weirder for Doug, who remembers it better. Who is carrying, we'll see, more of the burden. He sighs; he pushes back his chair. More wine.

T.J.: "Get me one of those shitty mineral waters while you're up?"

To break them up Doug tells Elaine to stop doing the dishes, but she says it keeps her calm. Bud, of course, steps right in it: "I let you boys grow up soft. Running around the governor's mansion like a couple of princes..."

Bud's big news, dropped just as casually as this sideswipe at their lives as men -- "You're not on the campaign," Doug nearly sputters -- is that he's located the mad pollster, Jubal Jacobs.

"No sense in staging a DNC coup unless you know you can pull it off and Jubal's the only pollster who can read the tea leaves this far out."