It did not land, and it could not have, because a board looking at timestamped footage is not an audience that can be charmed.

That was the whole difference between the world Dalton had ruled and the world he had walked into.

In his world, reality was a matter of who spoke most confidently, and he had always spoken most confidently.

In the world of documents and preservation demands and ethics reviews, confidence is worth nothing and the record is worth everything, and the record was not on his side.

He had spent a career learning to win the first kind of room.

He never understood that I had moved the fight into the second kind, where his gifts were simply irrelevant.