On any project, long before rehearsals commence, I take “alone time,” reading the script over and over, doing plenty of research about the play, the playwright, the time period – sometimes working solo; sometimes with an assistant, a dramaturg, or my good friend Hilary, who is a Greek, Shakespeare, and Shaw scholar, particularly adept an unraveling knotty passages – not unlike, I imagine, how Pete’s piano coach helped him. It’s important to be as prepared as possible before meeting the other players (in my case, designers and actors; with Pete, symphony musicians and conductor, or city council members and a campaign staff), so in the time you’re given to rehearse together you’re not starting at ground zero, but bringing your best game to the table. In creating a work of collaborative art (Pete: “Politics is soul craft” — like theatre), it’s vital to be thoroughly prepared in order to maintain the integrity of the whole while folding in the input of your teammates.

As well as plays by Shakespeare, I’ve directed a lot of musicals. When Jim (my partner) sits in on rehearsals, he often comments about how moving he finds the hours and hours of music, singing, and dance lessons actors have logged in order to acquire professional skill qualifying them for the limited number of jobs available in the highly-competitive musical theatre field. He is in awe of the parents who have driven their kids to the lessons, month after month, year after year, as Pete’s mom did in South Bend.

It was inspiring to know Pete would bring to the Presidency the concentration, focus, and discipline of an accomplished artist (or, for that matter, a professional athlete or military veteran). Clearly, those attributes are essential to leadership of any kind, but presidential leadership in particular — and entirely lacking in the occupant of the Oval Office whom Pete hoped to challenge.

All of this was, you should pardon the expression, music to my ears. The piano was one of my chief interests throughout the elementary grades and my first year of middle school. As the featured piano “prodigy” student of “Mrs. Simmons-up-the-hill,” as we called her – the wart on the tip of her chin fascinated me more me than the notes for Für Elise – I would step confidently to the keyboard of her living room baby grand, always featured last in her biannual student recitals, her pièce de résistance.