The trip almost came off without a hitch but for a couple of exceptions. One was a phony theory peddled by the right-wing echo chamber suggesting that Obama canceled a trip to an American military base in Germany to visit with servicemen and -women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan because he couldn’t bring cameras with him. The second problem was never aired publicly, but it had long-term repercussions.
Maureen Dowd, the talented but tart columnist for the Times, was traveling with us and was granted a brief interview with Obama. When we brought her to the front of the plane for the interview, however, Obama proceeded to blister her for a previous column she had written. No one got under Barack’s skin more than Maureen, whose penchant for delving into the psyches of her subjects was particularly irritating to the self-possessed Obama. Normally polite under any circumstances, he was patronizing and disrespectful to Maureen in a way that I had rarely seen. This was not well received by Dowd who, like most journalists, was accustomed to firing off salvos, yet decidedly uncomfortable when fired upon herself. After that awkward encounter, she seemed to take particular delight in psychoanalyzing Barack and belittling him in print, which only deepened his contempt. Maureen, who is as gracious and loyal to her friends as she is rough on the high and mighty, would become a friend of mine in Washington, which became a minor source of tension with Obama. “Why are you friends with her?” he would demand after Maureen sent one of her acid darts his way.
Meanwhile, I was delighted to see that the stories from back home reported that McCain’s team was “seething” over Obama’s elevated treatment by world leaders and the international media. The footage of Obama amid the frenzied, adoring crowds would later be used in a McCain ad portraying Barack as the Paris Hilton of politics, basking in unearned celebrity. It was the preposterous contrivance of a campaign rendered powerless in the face of the torrent of positive coverage Obama was receiving on the trip.
• • •
By the time Obama traveled overseas, the VP selection process was well under way. A team of lawyers had spent weeks quietly vetting potential candidates, under the direction of Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy, with strong input from Plouffe and our campaign attorney, Bob Bauer. I asked Harstad and Binder to conduct some very discreet polling and focus groups. In addition to testing various contenders, I wanted to know what people were looking for in Obama’s running mate. Not surprisingly, they wanted more of what Barack didn’t have. Governors were considered appealing for their executive experience, but more than that, folks were looking for someone with a little gray hair. They thought Obama represented sufficient change by himself, and preferred as his backstop a candidate with long experience in Washington and a deep résumé on national security.
Plouffe and I would brief Barack periodically. He wasn’t dismissive of the political considerations, but knew that if he won the White House, this would have been his first and most significant personnel decision. He was intent on finding someone who could not only help us win the election, but also bring value to the administration. Above all, he wanted someone who would be ready to take over if disaster struck. Though I never asked him about it, it seemed to me that a sense of his own mortality loomed somewhat large in the mind of the first African American to be this close to the presidency. He knew he could be choosing a future president.
In the end, the process winnowed down to four, and then three. The names that emerged were Biden, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Governors Tim Kaine of Virginia and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, though Sebelius didn’t make the final cut. In the political calculus, we concluded that we could pass on Hillary, but not for another woman.
In the midst of the search process, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, called to make a surprising recommendation. Reid floated the name of Robert Gates, Bush’s defense secretary, who had made a strongly positive impression after succeeding the terminally arrogant Donald Rumsfeld. Gates certainly had the gray hair, Washington experience, and national security credentials, but he was a Republican, and despite Obama’s vow to end the red state/blue state divides, there wasn’t much public appetite for such a fusion ticket. It was an intriguing suggestion, but never seriously considered.
I also got a call from Caroline.
“I’m here with Uncle Teddy,” she said. “He wants to talk to you.” Kennedy was home in Hyannis Port, where he was recovering from brain surgery to remove a malignant tumor. After a few minutes of small talk, Kennedy raised the vice-presidential search. The names of the front-runners had now leaked, which was natural, given the amount of vetting that had to be done.
“Joe Biden is a great guy,” Teddy said, in his familiar, though slightly labored, Bah-ston accent. “I can’t say a bad word about him.” Next he turned to Evan Bayh. Bayh’s father, Birch, also had served in the Senate and had once saved Kennedy’s life, pulling him from the wreckage of a small plane in which they had been flying. “His father is a great friend of mine. Great guy,” Kennedy said. “I just don’t know the son very well.” Since Kennedy had served with the younger Bayh for nearly a decade, I assumed he was making a point. “And I just don’t know Governor Kaine much at all. I’m sure he’s a good man. I just don’t know him.”
Kennedy then got to the point of the call. “Have you thought about John Kerry?” he asked. “He’s smart, he’s experienced, he has debated before and did very well.” Kennedy’s loyalty was impressive. The support he gave to his longtime ally from Massachusetts at a critical juncture in 2004 helped Kerry win the Iowa caucuses and the nomination. Now, fighting a mortal illness, Kennedy was calling from his sickbed to tout Kerry again. Yet choosing the last presidential nominee for the second spot seemed odd, and the idea never went anywhere.
Obama held a series of clandestine interviews with the finalists during the first week of August, and then asked Plouffe and me to do the same. So as Barack and his family took off for a vacation in Hawaii, David and I headed east in a small chartered jet for a whirlwind day of meetings with all three candidates.
The favorite was still Joe Biden, for all the reasons Barack had laid out in May. Biden had come through our polling project on top. Barack had interviewed him a couple of days earlier, in Minnesota, and had been impressed. Biden asked for no formal portfolio as vice president but very much wanted to play the role of consigliere, advising the president on all key decisions. “I want your advice, Joe,” Obama replied. “I just want it in ten-minute, not sixty-minute, increments!” The shot was playful, but the concern was real. Biden had shown admirable restraint in the debates, but he still could not shake his penchant for talking in a long, rambling fashion.
Plouffe and I landed midmorning in Wilmington, Delaware, and were greeted at the charter terminal by Biden’s wife, Jill, and his son Beau, who was the attorney general of Delaware. The Biden family story was well known. Shortly after he was elected to the Senate in 1972, Biden’s first wife, Neilia, and his daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident. Beau, then three, and another son, Hunter, who was two, were seriously injured in the crash. Biden kept vigil by their bedsides, and considered renouncing his Senate seat in order to care for the young boys. Instead, he would commute each day to Washington from Wilmington, becoming Amtrak’s greatest patron. In 1977 he married Jill, a vivacious schoolteacher, who added stability to the family. Together, they added a daughter, Ashley.
In the brief drive to our secret rendezvous with Biden, I was charmed by Jill and Beau, and struck by their close and seemingly easy relationship. They asked about our families, and spoke about theirs with a warmth and old-fashioned wholesomeness that—and perhaps this reflects only on the odd world of politics—seemed remarkably normal and unconstrained by their prominent places in the public eye. A few minutes after we arrived at the home of Biden’s sister, Valerie Owens, the senator drove up in a pickup truck wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, in keeping with the clandestine nature of our meeting. Before Beau drove off and left us to our inter
view, Biden kissed him good-bye. “I may come by later to see the kids,” he told his son, an Iraq War veteran and rising star in Delaware politics. Maybe because I lost my dad so young, I was touched by this simple expression of love between a father and his grown son. “There’s something special about this family,” I told Barack later when I was debriefing him on our trip.
In our interview, Biden did nothing to dispel our concerns about his verbosity. Even as we expressed that concern, he would respond in ten- or fifteen-minute bursts, coming up for air only long enough to inquire, “Do you understand what I’m saying here?” or “Am I making sense?” Yet when you cut through the hail of words, Biden was making sense. He was genuinely impressive, disarmingly candid, and just plain likable.
“You know, I ran for president because I thought I would be the best president, and I still do,” he said honestly, leaning in for emphasis. “But what, one percent of the people in Iowa agreed with me? And I was done. Barack got the nomination and now I want to help him win this election and govern. I like being a senator, but this is such an important election and such an important time. It’s just so important that he succeed.”
In what amounted to a two-hour monologue, Biden talked about the world, the middle class, the challenges and opportunities America faced, and how he might be helpful to Obama as a running mate. I was so transfixed that we were halfway back to the airport in Biden’s truck before I realized I had left my briefcase sitting by the poolside table where we’d met.
Our next stop was the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, where Evan Bayh, his wife, Susan, and their young twin sons were vacationing. Bayh, barefooted and in shorts, greeted us in his suite. He once was the Boy Wonder of Indiana politics, elected to statewide office at the age of thirty and governor two years later. He had benefitted from his father’s name, but shared little of his warmth or populist bent. Bayh was an avowed centrist who had won five statewide elections as a Democrat in a conservative state by hewing closely to the low-tax, small-government line. Now fifty-two, and in his second term in the Senate, Bayh was ready to move on. He had briefly explored a campaign for president, but found little traction.
Bayh had an impressive résumé and came from a state that would be in play for the Democrats for the first time in forty-four years. Still, I was struck by how low-key, even flat, he seemed. Maybe it was that we had just spent two hours with Joltin’ Joe, but I was a bit concerned by how little emotion Bayh displayed when he spoke, be it about family or the critical issues facing the nation. He presented himself more like an MBA interviewing for a senior management position at Whirlpool. Next to that of Biden, who spoke energetically, in big, historical terms, Bayh’s vision of the vice-presidential role and the times we lived in seemed decidedly small. As we made our way back to the plane, Plouffe and I agreed: Bayh would be a safe but uninspiring choice.
Our last stop was Richmond, Virginia, where we visited Tim Kaine. The round-faced, bright-eyed governor had an impressive story. He had served with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras, graduated from Harvard Law School, and then spent many years as a civil rights lawyer, primarily representing victims of housing discrimination in Richmond. He was elected to the City Council and then as mayor, and went on to win races for lieutenant governor and governor despite his personal opposition to both the death penalty and abortion. He was able to overcome the predictable attacks from the opposition and from within his own party, in part because he radiated a palpable sense of decency and integrity.
“I know it’s pretty unlikely that I’m going to be the pick, but it’s flattering to be considered,” he said as we sat down in the living room of the governor’s mansion. “I think it would mean so much for Barack to win this race. I’m happy to do anything I can to help. Even this.”
Kaine had already proven his commitment. He was the first sitting governor outside Illinois to endorse Obama, just days after he announced his candidacy in 2007. If affinity and shared values were the sole basis on which Barack was going to make the vice-presidential decision, he might well have selected Kaine.
“The problem with Tim is that we’re too much alike,” Obama said when Plouffe and I reported back from our journeys. “I don’t know how many young, liberal, Harvard-educated civil rights lawyers with very little Washington experience the market will bear.” On the other hand, Barack wasn’t going to choose someone with whom he had little affinity, knowing they could be partnered for years to come. That made Bayh unlikely. Barack also repeated his concerns about choosing anyone who had not experienced the unique pressures of a national campaign. “There’s not going to be a lot of time to adjust,” he said. “I’m afraid that if someone is experiencing this whole, crazy circus for the first time, it would be too much to ask.”
I felt confident that Barack was going to end his VP search where he began, with Biden, but his choice would remain shrouded in mystery a while longer. Plouffe and the social media team had a clever idea to boost our database of supporters, promising anyone who signed up that they would be the first to hear the news of Obama’s VP choice. He was absolutely determined to thwart leaks until our text message went out to our supporters the morning of August 23, two days before our convention was to open.
At the appointed hour, I was part of an elaborate scheme, flying a charter from a small commuter airport outside Chicago, holing up in some fleabag hotel outside Philly, and waiting for the Eagle (or, in this case, the text message) to land before fetching Biden and his family from their home in Wilmington for a flight back to Springfield for the announcement.
Afterward, I hit the road for a four-day journey to the convention with Barack.
In a nod to our grassroots campaign, we had decided to move Obama’s acceptance speech on the final evening from the arena to the football stadium where the Denver Broncos played. The open-air speech would be an electric moment, of which more than seventy-five thousand of our supporters would be a part. It would be an extraordinarily memorable night, though the candidate, recalling his announcement in subzero temperatures, was less than enthused when Plouffe and I pitched the idea.
“All right,” he said reluctantly. “But if it rains, you two guys will be standing next to me holding the umbrellas.”
It wasn’t the weather that worried me. It was what Barack would say once he got to the rostrum—because as we hopscotched the country just days before he would accept the nomination in Denver, we still didn’t have a speech. The draft we had was far too long and lacked an organizing phrase that would provide coherence and an emotional connection. We were going to have to pull together another big speech on the fly.
Late on Tuesday night, less than forty-eight hours before the speech, the muse finally arrived—and not a minute too soon. One of our convention night themes was “Renewing America’s Promise,” and I suggested that we organize Barack’s acceptance speech around that same idea. This is what our campaign and so much of Obama’s career had been about: standing up for that core American promise of a fair shake and opportunity for anyone willing to work for it. “Renewing America’s Promise” extended to our global leadership as well, where the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld approach had left our alliances in tatters.
“I think this can work.” Barack said, offering Favreau some language and structural guidance. “Favs, you’re going to have to rework this thing overnight and get me a new draft in the morning.” It was already close to midnight. The next morning, a bleary-eyed Favreau emerged with a solid draft in hand.
Later that day, after our flight to Denver, I was looking it over in my hotel room as the convention was getting under way on the TV. When the roll call nominating Obama began, I put the speech down and watched. For weeks we had been pushing for Hillary to make the motion nominating Obama by acclimation, but some of her supporters were insisting on recording all her delegates.
The roll call began, but an hour or so in, there was a dramatic stir. The crowd, cheering with antici
pation, parted as Hillary entered the hall and made her way to the New York delegation. Sheldon Silver, the New York Assembly Speaker and delegation chair, warmly acknowledged every New Yorker but the state mascot before finally relinquishing the mike to the state’s junior senator. When he did, Hillary read slowly and resolutely from a statement she held in her hands.
“With eyes firmly fixed on the future, in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and our country,” she said, “let’s declare together, in one voice, right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president.”
The hall erupted in a raucous demonstration, as Hillary, smiling through this difficult and bittersweet moment, called on the hall to suspend the vote and nominate Obama.
Maybe it was simply the codification of the victory we’d fought so hard to secure, but the ritual was truly moving. The image of Hillary, flanked by delegates on the convention floor, making such a strong and emphatic motion was an inspiring symbol of the party unity we had sought and needed.
• • •
It was an incredible accident of scheduling that Obama’s speech the next day, August 28, would fall on the forty-fifth anniversary of Dr. King’s momentous March on Washington. The date had been set years in advance by the Democratic National Committee, long before anyone could imagine the nominee would be a black man. Now it had special meaning.
Without King and the movement he led, Barack would not have been poised to accept the nomination for president. It was a debt that was impossible to ignore. The cold political calculus, however, dictated that we not overdo it. It was obvious that his nomination represented a huge milestone in the social history of the country, but we didn’t want to suggest that this was the central rationale for his candidacy. The tribute ultimately found a home among the soaring closing passages in which Barack paid homage to America’s promise.
Believer: My Forty Years in Politics Page 37