Pod Save America - That's the Ticket Episode 1: Vet on It

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

In the first episode of this three part mini-series, Dan Pfeiffer and Alyssa Mastromonaco break down the vetting for vice presidential candidates - how it happens, why it's so secret, and what can go wrong. They'll talk you through the history of the vetting process, their experiences on the Kerry and Obama campaigns, and how they think the Biden campaign is approaching the process.

Welcome to That's the Ticket, a three-part Pod Save America bonus series about the vice presidential selection process. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco. This Pod Save America bonus series is about the process, how it's going to happen, how Joe Biden's going to run it, what is happening behind the scenes. We don't know who Joe Biden should pick. We don't know who he's going to pick. So we're not here to tell you what's going to happen. We want to try to help you, much like Tommy did in his Iowa series, understand exactly what is happening behind the scenes in this very secretive process that's going to be such a consequential

part of this election. Alyssa, how you doing, buddy? Buddy, it's so good to see you. Before we get into this episode, I want to talk about why we're doing this. I'll give you my answer. Okay. I want to hear what you have to say. Sure. My primary reason is just generally looking for more ways that you and I can work together. We always did our best work, I think, when our offices were across the hall over many years in the White House. And so it's very good to talk about this. And if I was going to talk about the vice presidential selection process with anyone, it would be you, not just because we're very good friends, but because you may be the world's

living foremost expert on how the process works. You helped run this process for John Kerry when he picked John Edwards. We will not hold that selection against you. You helped run this process when Barack Obama picked Joe Biden. We'll give you full credit for that one. But we're also doing this because, as we've talked about on Pod Save America before, there are five moments that matter in a presidential campaign. The convention speech, the three debates, and the vice presidential selection. Now, in this very strange pandemic-related campaign that we're in, the convention is going to be different and maybe diminished. Who the F knows if Donald Trump's going to show up for any debates? It's hard to find the moderators that he can agree on. I don't think Joe Biden's going to

agree to Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, and Sean Hannity. And so therefore, the single most important moment may be the vice presidential selection. And some people have said that this might be the most important vice presidential selection in history. Do you agree? And if so, why? Well, first, I just have to go back to the beginning and say that people don't understand how many years we spent in proximity to each other. But what they also don't know is that I was routinely caught barefoot in your office by President Barack Obama because I get hotfoot and I used to walk over to your office with no shoes on because that's just how I am. And also we're doing this because I think it is one of the most interesting things that

happens in a presidential campaign. And also one that gets so kind of like bogged down with punditry, which we are obviously not, that people sort of don't remember some of the historical context, way things have been done and sort of how things have changed. So to your question, though, yes, I think this is probably the most important VP pick I can remember, because Joe Biden is on the older side. You know, he's on the older end of the spectrum at 77. He has to unite a party. Alyssa, 80 is the new 70. Well, I keep telling everyone 44 is the new 28. So I completely agree with that.

It doesn't change the state of my gray hair, though. So some things are just facts. So, yeah, I mean, he also let's let's be clear, it's also super important because Joe Biden straight up said he is going to pick a woman, which is a big deal for many reasons. But also now it's, you know, you have to make the point that not all women are the same. So he has a lot of work to do in the next couple of weeks. Yeah, I think this is a really interesting vice presidential pick, because as you said, his pick will be the third woman to ever be on the ticket as a potential vice president. He has billed himself as a bridge to the future of the party. And so the person he picks is not just going to be the governing partner to a 77-year-old

president, you know, if he is elected. It will also be potentially the next standard bearer of this party. It will set a direction about where the party is going. Interestingly, Joe Biden has been somewhat coy about whether he would run for reelection. And so if he were to not do that, the odds on favor from the day Joe Biden is elected president to be the Democratic nominee in 2024, which seems like 100 years from now, will be this person. And so this is, I think, a massively consequential pick. And to your point, I think it is the most discussed and least understood part of presidential politics. This will be the obsession of the political press

corps and podcasts like ourselves, like Positive America and Hysteria for the next many months. But most of the people talking about it, writing about it, tweeting about it, podcasting about it, don't understand about how the process actually works because it is so shrouded in secrecy. So in this episode, we want to dig into two parts of that process that I think will help give people an inside view of how the Biden campaign will go about running this process and making a decision. Part one is vetting, which some people talk about all the time. Who's being vetted? Who's not being? But I want to talk about what it means and how it happens. And the second part is the secrecy.

Why is this process kept shrouded in such secrecy? And what do the campaigns do to ensure that it stays secret? And that's one of the very particular points of expertise you bring to this because you ran the processes to ensure that both John Kerry and Barack Obama's processes happened under the cloak of darkness, pulling some pretty amazing tricks that we will talk about to ensure that that happened. I had a real worm's eye view. I see. That's a very specific and clever animal reference, I guess. Thank you. So let's start with vetting.

So once a candidate narrows down their list, the campaign begins an intense vetting process. Let's start by talking about what that process looks like. Who's conducting it? And what does it mean for the people who are on the quote unquote shortlist? Sure. So I think that for most candidates, let's say a John Kerry, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, they have an idea of the kind of person that they want. Right. And so I think that for the purposes of time, you have a pretty broad list. So I think most candidates probably start with a list that's probably close to 10 to 15. You don't want to heavily vet that many people, but you want to see sort of what are your options? What's interesting? And I'm sure everybody has their outside the box two or three people that would be interesting and buzzy and newsworthy.

So you have those folks, you do sort of like you have a team that's led usually by some very serious lawyers who don't do anything lightly and a team of advisors that actually, you know, brought me into the process, or Caroline Kennedy, who was running the process for us. I had, and none of us, you and I, we had really no insight or visibility into the beginning of the process, the bigger list that was ultimately called down. So then they start doing some research. What have people written about in law school or college? What have they written about in newspapers? What have they said in speeches? Any sort of publicly available information. Ultimately, some people get disqualified in this part of the process. Then there is for our purpose, and also let me stipulate to anyone listening, And also, let me stipulate to anyone listening, we, everything I have ever done was basically pre-real internet. So we did like encryption and all that stuff.

Everything we did was, whether for John Kerry or Barack Obama, were binders of information that were researched and presented to the candidate. They go through the books. They're like, this person, maybe not so much. These people, let's see more. And then you get down to a smaller list. And that list goes into a heavier, more intensive vetting process, which can include things like a questionnaire, which most people get, which can be anywhere from 50 to like 150 questions that people answer, which then helps the lawyers dig deeper into what they should be doing research on, deeper questions they should ask,

you know, everything from have you paid your taxes to have you downloaded porn to do you have children you don't know about? I mean, all kinds of things are asked of people. So it's pretty, like anyone getting into the process has to know it's pretty invasive. And I think that, you know, over the years, there are times when, you know, like issues now, something that you and I were not real worried about in 2008, or certainly me in 2004 was people's social media profiles, what people had said or posted. That was not something that we had to research. So on the one hand, there's a lot more that people can do to shoot themselves in the foot by what they put on social media. But social media also makes it a lot easier to find things like

articles that may have been written when they were in law school or dissertations or anything like that. So as you referenced, Barack Obama's committee when he was picking Joe Biden was run by a group of people, but including Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder. Oh, right. Eric Holder. Yes. And the people on Joe Biden's committee, it's a mix of people, including former Senator Chris Dodd, who's a close personal friend of Joe Biden, served together for many years, Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, who's the Congresswoman from Delaware, the mayor of LA, Eric Garcetti, and Cynthia Hogan, who is a longtime aide to Joe Biden, both in the Senate and in the vice presidency. And they're the chairs of the committee. And as you point out, there are two parts of this process. There's the longer list,

and then there's the short list. And we're able to discover in some ways who's on the short list because in one way in which the media has gotten pretty savvy about this in recent years is they know now to ask people who may be on the short list a very specific and direct question, which is, have you agreed to be vetted? So have you agreed to be vetted? Because you actually have to decide whether you want to be considered for vice president because, as you point out, you have to fill out this deeply invasive questionnaire. You have to hand over 10 to 15 may have, right, which in this day and age may be some archive of your tweets or blog posts that exist somewhere on the internet, even if they're harder to find. Law review articles, were you a columnist for a local paper? You know, famously, Florida Governor Bob Graham, who was considered for vice president three times in 1992 by Bill Clinton, by Al Gore in 2000, and then by John Kerry in 2004. Bob Graham used to take detailed notes of every single thing he did every day.

Yep. Like what he had for lunch, who he met with, what shoes he wore, very detailed. So he had literally rooms full of diaries that veteran attorneys would go through to see if there was anything in there. I don't know what he would have possibly put in there, like egg salad sandwich for lunch, bribery scheme in the afternoon. I was there for a recording session of the diary when I was alone in a room with him. And God is my witness. He asked for the spelling of my name because Alyssa's complicated. God is my witness. He asked for the spelling of my name because Alyssa's complicated. And we think he put the Chinese food menu in there that we ordered from because John Kerry was very

late and he ordered food and then he put it in his little journal. So that's an example of the detail by which this process is and how rigorous it is. And you have teams of attorneys, right? And it's both attorneys who are the types of people who also vet Supreme Court nominees, and they work with people who are up for confirmation for cabinet posts and the like, but also forensic financial accountants who can go through their taxes to see if they paid their taxes appropriately. Did they take some deduction that may be legal but would look very bad politically, could run up against the policies of the nominee, those sorts of things.

The other thing that actually was a big deal is that if you were a lawyer, they would go through all the clients you ever represented. Yeah, right. And so incredibly detailed. Help our listeners understand what it is they are looking for. Like what would be disqualifying per se? You know, I mean, the really big ones are, you know, have you written anything that is really sort of radical, something that's, you know, not sustainable in the modern era. You know, I mean, some people when they were vetted are older, you know, and if we look at someone

who was a colleague like of Senator Obama's when he was in the Senate, like Senator Byrd, I mean, he's had a real arc of transformation over his career. The number one thing is, is there anything in someone's history that is not defensible, right? It's like people have all sorts of complicated things, but like, is there something that if it comes up, you literally can't get behind? So paying taxes, obviously a big one. You know, their spouse, like people forget their spouse, their kids, they're all part of the equation. If the spouse of whoever the person under consideration is, has had clients, they get looked at, their writings get looked at,

because it's a real, it is a package when you are nominated, it's you and your entire family. Those are the big things like, is this person a good person? You know, is what they're telling me backed up by the facts, which, you know, in some cases, we've seen vice presidents who've been selected in the in the past who, you know, there was like a little bit of disconnect between maybe perhaps what they said and what ultimately the press found out, because you want to know everything before the New York Times does. I think that is the key point, which is, I think particularly in an era where someone like Donald Trump is president, a lot of the previous things that might have been disqualifying may seem less, quote unquote, disqualifying in this era. But what the campaign desperately does not want is to be surprised.

Right. There can be all sorts of problems in someone's past, but if there's a good explanation the campaign can prepare their defense for it in advance, then they are okay with it. Because there is no perfect person. People's views have evolved over time. They have said dumb things. They have maybe messed up their taxes or had a family member who did something problematic. But as long as the campaign is ready for it, then they feel okay about it. But I think there are two historical examples where the vetting process did not work that I think help illustrate what it is that the Biden campaign is going to be looking for as they look at the shortlist. And so in a second, we'll get to Sarah Palin, who most of you may remember from her time on the McCain campaign, Sarah Night Live, reality television, and the like.

But there's another example that sort of began the modern vetting era, which is in 1972, when George McGovern was running against Richard Nixon, he picked Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton to be his nominee. And 18 days after that announcement, Eagleton dropped off the ticket because it was discovered that he, during the 60s, had undergone shock therapy and other treatments for depression and other conditions. I think we have a clip of Eagleton's press conference when he dropped out. Ladies and gentlemen, I will not divide the Democratic Party, which already has too many divisions. Therefore, tomorrow morning, I will write to the chairman of the Democratic Party withdrawing my candidacy. My personal feelings are secondary to the necessity to unify the Democratic Party and to elect George McGovern as the next president of the United States. And I think this one is fascinating.

Well, first, let me ask you, in the modern era where we are right now, someone having gone through depression and sneaky treatment for it would certainly not be disqualifying, correct? No, no, I can't imagine that it would. But it does go to the surprise, right? No, no. I can't imagine that it would. But it does go to the surprise, right? Like, obviously, the world has changed since 1972. But what was the big problem for the McGovern campaign was that they didn't know. They were not prepared for it. And it's interesting how that process goes back. You can go back and read

the histories of it, which is McGovern was a huge underdog to Nixon. Everyone thought Nixon was going to cruise to re-election. And therefore, McGovern was really struggling to get someone to agree to be his vice president. He tried very hard to get Ted Kennedy to do it. Ted Kennedy had his eyes on another more winnable election in the future that he hoped to run in. with the mayor of Boston, Kevin White, got Kevin White to finally agree and then had to dump Kevin White because it was going to cause a revolt among his supporters in Massachusetts because Kevin White had supported Muskie in that election. And so he went down and down and down his list and ended up with Thomas Eagleton. And so they didn't, Gary Hart, who future presidential candidate, Senator from Colorado, was McGovern's campaign manager. And he later admitted they did basically no background check. And so Eagleton began the modern vetting era, but it is an example of the dangers of not vetting. For as much as we talk about Sarah Palin, what you're really trying to avoid is Thomas Eagleton, right? Right. And for him, I think the thing is, I mean, because ultimately they the vetting team, Gary Hart, they ended up speaking with his psychiatrist.

You know that they they ended up. I also can't imagine a world in which I would ever let if I were being vetted, someone talk to my doctor. But that's a whole other thing. But no, he and, you know, back then they're really clear when you read back about it that back then people took people at their word. You know, your word was your calling card. It was your bond. And so, you know, but yeah, they were pretty clear that even back then, like most of the other people who were vetted too, like weren't really vetted. They were sort of like a cursory overview, like have they murdered anybody? And they were in elected office. And I think that back then, you know, especially back then, that being in elected office kind

of meant you were already vetted, you know? And I think that we assume that to, you know, on the scale of zero to 100, I think being a current elected official probably now gets you to like 50%, right? But there's maybe 50% of what's really about you has been discovered, but there's probably still a lot more for better or worse that people need to bring forward to make sure that, like you said, if there's an issue that's not disqualifying, it can be disqualifying if you don't get out in front of it. You raise a really interesting point, because in the conversation about vetting, right? And when you hear the pundits talking about like pros and cons

for various people who may be on Joe Biden shortlist, oftentimes when they talk about people like Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, who have been in national politics as they ran for president, you hear one of the arguments of people saying is they've been vetted, right? Compared to someone like a Stacey Abrams or maybe a Tammy Baldwin or Keisha Lance Bottoms, whoever it might be on this list. So, you know, people who have not faced the scrutiny of a presidential election. And while certainly there is tremendous scrutiny of presidential election, that analysis that running for president in a primary equates vetting, I think, is a dramatic misunderstanding

of how in-depth the vetting process is and how much greater the scrutiny is when you are running to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. So even if those people released tax returns, I think as both Warren and Harris and others did, nothing near the set of personal and private papers that I presume have already been given to the Biden campaign by the people who are actively being considered. Well, and also just look at someone like Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar. They were prosecutors. And so before, yes, they had a history. Yes, they had cases in their past. But now there is someone going through a fine tooth comb with things that they have decided, policies that they've made to make sure that there is not something that can be brought up and used against them, or at least that they understand sort of the history or environment

around some of the decisions they might have made. It's just worth noting that the people who have run for president have somewhere in their files deeply personal information about others. the people who have run for president have somewhere in their files, deeply personal information about others, right? Like somewhere, you know, Mitt Romney has a questionnaire from a Marco Rubio and a Paul Ryan with a lot of information, right? So true. I never thought about that.

This is actually why a lot of people, particularly in a tough, what looks like it may be a tough election, decide not to be vetted. Right. There's always a chance that information leaks out or you're in a situation where you're on the short list and then the polls right now, then I think a lot of people would be more reticent to get in the process because it is so, there'd be so much exposure. Like there are a number of Republicans who refuse to join Mitt Romney's process for this very reason in 2012. That's the Eagleton challenge. But let's talk about Palin for a sec, because the Palin vetting is perhaps the most famous failure in American history. It was chronicled in a movie. It was so bad, there was an HBO movie about it with Julianne Moore.

Julianne Moore, who played Sarah Palin, who I believe won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Sarah Palin. She was ridiculously uninformed about just about everything and became easily spoofable. You might remember this line. You know, Hillary and I don't agree on anything. I believe that diplomacy should be the cornerstone of any foreign policy. And I can see Russia from my house. So, like, when you begin the vetting process, one of your goals should be, like, you want to pass the Eagleton test, which is they should make it more than 18 days. But you really want to pass the Palin test.

When it's over, it didn't blow up in your face so bad that HBO wants to make a movie about it. So talk a little bit about the Palin process and what you think went wrong there. So, okay, so we'll level set that John McCain wanted to pick Joe Lieberman. Like that is who he wanted to be his running mate. And his advisors thought that was a catastrophic idea as Joe Lieberman was a pro-choice independent at the time. But generally terrible on a host of other issues, to be clear. Yes. And his advisors were like, this is a terrible idea.

And they went for, and like you and I have talked about this, like they went for outside the box, right? They went for, let's make noise. You know, they, they have this, I mean, look, when you describe her, I mean, when they announced her, we were like, God, I hope we're not fucked. I mean, cause she had a great first couple of days out of the gate. I mean, she was dynamic. She's charismatic. She was, you know, we didn't know the backstory at the time, but she was a good public speaker. But what happened is they did an accelerated vet because she was not, as I think we've come to understand, in the initial trove of people who were deeply vetted. And she was done on an accelerated schedule.

And she was done on an accelerated schedule. I mean, they missed things that were literally malpractice. I mean, the fact that she had said that she was, they thought she was against the bridge to nowhere. She was not against the bridge to nowhere. That she was being investigated for firing whoever that person was in Wasilla that they thought was some sort of pay-to-play situation. It's unclear whether they actually knew that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant when they did this. They said that McCain knew at the time, but they acted a bit surprised when the press started talking about it. And basically, they went for style over substance. And what they realized quickly after she was selected is that they had not pressed her

on any of her policy positions about what she actually thought about her things that we would consider so fundamental. But like, she's going to be vice president. They had no understanding of what she believed about foreign policy, most kinds of domestic policy, like if she understood sort of the world at all as it worked. So they underestimated the press in a very big way. And I think they underestimated sort of the past or overestimated rather the past that they thought maybe McCain would get because he's obviously such a, you know, distinguished public servant. But no, they went fast and hard and loose.

And, you know, McCain didn't know her at all and only met with her for a brief period before she was announced. So even he didn't like nobody had a real sense. I think no one could stand up and explain, you know, in 15 minutes or less who she was and what she stood for, other than that she was the governor of Alaska and she had a family and she was a hockey mom. Other than that, they really didn't know much when they sent her out on that stage. That's a great transition to the next part I want to talk about. So when we think about vetting, right, there is the, like, so we talked originally about sort of the public record search from the team of lawyers working on it. Then there is the in-depth

investigation piece that involves the personal records, the tax returns, etc. And the next part is an interview process, right? And so that interview process includes, obviously, attorneys at the beginning who ask follow-up questions to these very invasive questions like, as you mentioned, have you ever downloaded porn, which is a question directly from the McCain questionnaire from 2008. And obviously, the process ends in an interview with the nominee, in this case, Joe Biden. What are the interviews that happen in the middle of that process? So one, they sit down with the vetting attorneys and whoever's running the process. Let's use Caroline Kennedy as an example. They get a sense of their interest in the process. I mean, it's not something you email someone and they're like, do you want to be considered? So they get a sense of their level. VP, yay or nay. They respond with a thumbs up emoji. Do you want to go to prom? And then they sit with the lawyers.

They go through lawyers. They usually also have a personal attorney that's involved that helps get the documents together for them and get them to the attorneys. And then you usually would have one or two people who are very close to whoever the nominee is. And by nominee, I mean like Barack Obama or John Kerry or George Bush, who meets with them and says like, okay, let's talk a little bit more. Let's get a little bit more into sort of who you are, what you stand for, what kind of relationship you would be looking for

with the candidate if you did this. And then people sort of have an assessment and either verbally, like in a small group meeting or via binder, which someone gets on a plane and takes to wherever the candidate is. The candidate's like, OK, let's narrow this list down and, you know, even fewer people. Democratic nominees who are running for president end up meeting with between, I'd say like four to eight candidates for vice president total. And then after that, it gets sort of, again, further culled down to probably two or three. And then sometimes there is an additional meeting. And then those people continue to meet with the lawyers and the people running the search committee. And then usually there's like a final conversation with the presidential candidate and the finalists. So do you remember how many people that Obama and Kerry each met with?

I believe John Kerry met with about six or seven. And I was there for all but one. And I believe Barack Obama in total met with three. Yeah, I think the three is my recollection as well. Yeah. And the people who meet with the potential vice president on behalf of the candidate, who were those people for Kerry and Obama just to give people some sense of how close the person is to get that job? For President Obama, it was other than the actual immediate vetting team, it was David Axelrod and David Plouffe. of how close the person is to get that job. For President Obama, it was other than the actual immediate vetting team, it was David Axelrod and David Plouffe.

And for John Kerry, I've thought about this and I think it was maybe just Mary Beth Cahill who was the campaign manager. I don't know that anybody who wasn't an immediate member of the vetting team met with them other than her, but I'd have to double check with her. The thing that's so interesting about this is it speaks to how shrouded in secrecy this process really is, where it is being talked about, reported about, written about by someone every day. It's a constant topic of podcasts and Twitter. But no one has any idea these things are happening, right?

You sort of know the broad short list of people. And some of that isn't even anyone ever told you. It's just there's a list of people who are obvious choices. And for Biden, that was even easier to identify because he made it very clear. He pledged to pick a woman. So because politics as it is, you just lopped off like 70% of Democratic politicians, right? And then you find out, as we mentioned, which people are being vetted if they showed up at the wrong cable set at the wrong time and got asked the question. And then you know nothing else until close to the end of the process.

at the wrong time and got asked the question. And then you know nothing else until close to the end of the process. And it is incredibly important to the campaigns to keep this process secret, right? And I think there are two parts of the secrecy that go into it. One is the secrecy of the decision-making process, and then the secrecy of the decision once it's made, and how you keep that secret. But as you mentioned, there's a million moving pieces here. You have very prominent people recognizable to any reporter in the entire country and a lot of the public doing meetings with vetting attorneys, doing meetings with presidential candidates who are being followed, at least in normal world, by a plane full of reporters. You have political advisors like

Mary Beth, like Axelrod, like Plouffe, who are recognizable to every reporter in America, meeting with candidates. It was your job for Kerry and Obama to make sure that process happened in secret. Can you talk about some of the specific, not that I want to sort of put all of the Biden campaign's business out on the street here, but so you talk about some of the specific things you did to ensure that John Kerry and Barack Obama got to conduct the process in secret. Yeah. So, well, one thing to remember is that, like, I feel like the process was always, like, it wasn't an out in the open thing, but it wasn't as guarded, I think, as it was until John

Carey. Because remember, and you worked for Al Gore, so I'm sure you'll remember, is that Al Gore wanted to make a splash with his announcement. And so his team was actually leaking, as I remember, that it was looking like John Carey. And I know this because I had started working for John Carey in his Boston office. And so this is actually how I developed my secrecy relationship with him, because he was being vetted and some of the things that they wanted from him would go through me. And then he was very- I forgot. You've worked on this in three ways. You've worked for two nominees, picking someone and someone who was the runner up in 2000. He was the runner up. And you know, the thing is, is that I had real feeling,

like people can think, you know, that if perception is that John Kerry is aloof, that's so be it. But I've seen him in so many ways that is absolutely not my perception of him. But he was, I will use my words. I'm not sure that he would say this, but it was like a public humiliation.

You know, he was put out there as like the person who was going to get picked. And then he wasn't picked. And that stung. I think that that really stung. And so fast forward a couple of years when he's looking for a vice president, he was adamant that the person who sort of arranged all these meetings was me because he thought that I really understood what he would want and that he

wanted all of these people who are being considered to be treated as I think he hoped he would have been in 2000. And so the John Kerry, see, we all know that Barack Obama is a much more, um, simple person. He does not like complications. So we dealt with three people with Barack Obama. But with John Kerry, I definitely left the headquarters of our campaign for like two or three weeks and lived in random cities around the country, setting up these meetings for him and other people. And so, I mean, every single person that he was meeting with, I arranged for them to most likely get in the night before. They were in the hotel room before the press ever arrived.

So press wouldn't see people coming and going. You know, everyone was told to wear like nondescript clothing. We'll get back to that. Joe Biden, I have words for him as part of the process. And we met with them in just like very unusual places, except for one person that was so obvious. People were like, this can't be. And the truth is that because John Kerry was so clear about how secret he wanted the process to be, that reporters became utterly rabid about trying to figure out who he was meeting with and where.

To the point that because people will remember that John Kerry had some dental work done before the convention, which required several hours at his dentist's office. And people were convinced, reporters were convinced that the meetings were happening at Dr. Starr's office. And they would start like stalking the dentist's office to see if people were coming in and out. But so- Which I think is completely related to the fact that I think for a long period of time in The Sopranos, Tony Soprano met with people in his doctor's office because it's where the FBI couldn't bug him.

So I think that this is a David Chase specific problem that the press was following. Well, I caught on to Sopranos a little later, so that's entirely possible. So my favorite story of all. So again, like I said, I stayed in random motels. I would meet with these people. And the thing is, most people who are being considered will do whatever you tell them to do. Like they will meet you in the sixth floor in the back right-hand corner of a parking garage if you tell them to do that. Someone actually did that. Then there are the-

Will you say who? No, he's a very nice man. I don't want to do that, but he was very obedient. Will you say who? No, he's a very nice man. I don't want to do that, but he was very obedient. But then there are some people who are just so full of hubris that you want to text your boss and be like, you cannot pick this person. They are such a dick to people who work for them. And one of those people who is a real dick, actually, this was the biggest prank of all time played on me.

John Kerry was meeting with someone secretly. I was with the person who kept telling me to go get them coffee. Fine. Had to have a saucer and a mug. Okay. And this person had like a flatulence problem. And it was really overwhelming in the room. And so John Kerry had arrived and I went to tell the Secret Service officer, whose name I remembered, it's Bob Slamma, and I hope you're listening. I was like, Bob, we have a problem. Like, the room stinks. And he's like, well, you better tell John Kerry. And I was like, I don't want to. And he's like, you've got to tell him. So I told John Kerry, who took the news like a champ, because it turns out he has a very diminished sense of smell, which the Secret Service knew and I did not. And so it was very embarrassing. But you know, to John Kerry's credit. He took like champ, just went in.

But for Kerry, I mean, and also John Kerry, unlike Barack Obama, he would run late. So I spent a lot of time with these people, like one-on-one. Tom Vilsack, the nicest man you will ever meet. John Kerry met with Vilsack. He met with Bob Graham. And then, you know, the Kerry ones were just, I mean, it's been reported, but the meeting with John Edwards was just like bananas. We went to such extremes that Madeline Albright helped us broker the meeting because they all lived in Georgetown. And I had to sneak them both in. And John Edwards also like very amenable. I was like, wear a baseball hat, come in the back door, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I fell asleep while they were meeting, watching Footloose on Madeleine Albright's couch. And John Kerry had to wake me up. And he was like, how do we get out

of here? And you know what? Again, took it like a champ. He's like, Alyssa, I need, gotta wake up. You gotta wake up. How do we get out of here? So again, a super good sport about the whole thing. Barack Obama, far fewer people. We only set up three meetings. At that point, because people, it had become such a sport for people to try to figure out who John Kerry was picking. We knew that it was gonna be even worse in 2008.

So we had code names, C1, C2, and C3 for the three people that Barack Obama was going to meet with. I had a- And for the people who, the three people were Tim Kaine, Senator from Virginia, Joe Biden, and Evan Bayh, former Senator from Indiana. Correct. And Evan Bayh, one of those people who I thought was very aloof, super on the program about following all of our instructions to the

T. And when I say our, it was me and Molly Buford, because you'll remember for us, the vetting team in 2008 was actually based in DC. And so Molly did a lot of the paperwork, not paperwork, but she was sort of one end of the process and I was the other. But Evan Bai was leaving to meet Barack Obama from DC. And so she's the one who picked him up and took him to the airport. And we know that our friend David Plouffe is very cheap. He likes to know where every single dollar is going. So when he's like, look, you have to do this, I want you to do this. I was like, that's fine. But like, I'm going to need some private planes. And I'm going to need to like, if you want this done right, we can't skimp. And he was like,

okay, fine. Let's stick on the private plane thing for a sec, because I think that's important to people's perspective. It's like it's so important. This process is being watched so closely that. If obviously, if, let's say, Barack Obama were in Wisconsin and then Joe Biden or Evan Bayer, Tim Kaine was seen getting on a plane to fly to Milwaukee. Every reporter would know they're being – so that's part of it. But then private planes are not a cure-all. No. Because there are a handful of reporters who know how to track private plane tail numbers and would very constantly ask the campaign, say, there's this plane flying from, you know, let's take Joe Biden

from Delaware, where Joe Biden lives to wherever Barack Obama is, right? Is Joe Biden on that plane for an interview, right? So you get private planes, how would you shroud that process? So you know that I love private planes. I mean, I'm a socialist and everything, but I really I'm very into how private planes work. And we would not only pick venues. So again, we would fly people to wherever Barack Obama was going to be like way before he got there so that, you know, there was a little bit of secrecy to that. But we would also try to pick airports that they were departing from that were not usual or not, not big airports, like airports that you'd have to be pretty fucking deft to even think about checking that were not usual or not big airports,

like airports that you'd have to be pretty fucking deft to even think about checking at like the departure for a certain call sign for an airport. You know, like when we flew Joe Biden, he didn't leave from Delaware. He left from, I think, someplace in Pennsylvania. You know, so it made it a little, Evan Bai was in Washington, DC.C., but, you know, D.C. is much harder to track because there's like a lot of private plane activity in and out of

those airports, which gives you some cover sometimes. But again, like he was dressed so that no one could recognize him. He met Molly Buford in the parking garage at Union Station, where he was then taken to, I think the plane he was flying out of was at Dulles. Tim Kaine had to like sneak out of his house. And I'm pretty sure we told him he couldn't tell his wife. Like I'm nearly positive. Ted Scioto was in charge of that one. And so people, and that's the other thing too, it's like a lot of people didn't tell extended family members. I mean, we were just very specific. And then there was Joe Biden. Joe Biden. So one of my deputies, her name is Jessica Wright. She was from Minnesota. And so we had figured out because

of Barack Obama's travel schedule, we were going to do the Biden meeting in Minnesota. And she is one of the shrewdest, smartest people I've ever worked with. And when I got the phone call from her that was like, AM. And remember, we told everyone to be incognito, incognito. Joe Biden was in his aviators and a bomber jacket and a baseball hat. He looked exactly like himself. And as he was getting off the plane, there was another private plane not that far away with a bunch of like, I think, oldish people who had come back, like a big group, like, you know, like a Perillo tour type situation. And she's like, he started waving at them. And they were like, hey, Joe Biden. And she was so sick to her stomach. I was like, girl, it's gonna be okay. And I didn't know if it was gonna be okay. But he was the only person who we were like, you got to abide the rules here. And he

thought he was. I mean, he wasn't trying to be whatever, but I think he misunderstands how identifiable he and his aviators and that pearly grin and that wave can be to people. But luckily, nobody knew. But we knew and we lived with that horror for days. Obviously, Joe Biden is in the middle of this process right now, right? It is happening in the middle of this pandemic. He's not doing It is happening in the middle of this pandemic. He's not doing a lot of events on the road where he could have surreptitious meetings with people in hotel rooms or parking garages or wherever else the modern day Alyssa Mastromonaco would schedule those things.

How do you think the pandemic has affected this process? And does it make it harder or easier to keep it shrouded in secrecy? And on top of that, can you pick a vice president over Zoom? Is that possible? So that's the thing. I think that obviously, because you can Zoom, and no one knows you're Zooming with someone. So it makes it easy to probably have a lot of conversations with people. Like I personally don't know how my rapport is with people who aren't already my friends when I'm on Zoom, but he definitely can talk to people. Having in-person meetings seems nearly impossible. And let me tell you, if he is having in-person meetings, hats off to you people, because I've been trying to check it

out and like, I can't tell that you're having anything done. So, you know, I think that on the one hand, you may get a more surprising outcome. Surprising just as in the element of surprise, not like outside of the box choice. But the thing that I think you ultimately have to sacrifice potentially is some of the surprise so that you can actually, you can have the one-on-one meetings and get a sense of someone. Like that's actually sort of, you know, the Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, is that their chemistry in person was so extraordinary

that it like shot him to the top of the list. And so I think that, and also the thing that's different for most people other than George H.W. and Al Gore, it's like when you've been a vice president, you kind of know what you want in someone. So either that makes it easier because you're like, nope, nope, nope, maybe. Or you really do need to sit down and meet with the people because you know what, like he knows what Obama expected of him and what he had to deliver as a partner. And maybe you want to see it. So like, there's really no good answer to this,

except that it's hard. You know, you do wonder whether the inability to have in-person meetings would tend to favor people that Joe Biden already has a close personal relationship with. Just, I say this half in jest when we talk about what factors Joe Biden will put into this. But what I think a lot of people may not know is that when Barack Obama asked Joe Biden to be his vice president, part of the deal was that they would have lunch, just the two of them, once a week. Every week, they were both in town, right? And so I do think Joe Biden does know that he is picking someone that he's going to have to have lunch with one day a week for 48 years. And like, that's a big leap of faith with someone you've only had

a couple of zoom calls with a lot of time. So I do imagine there might be some serious efforts underway to try to get these people in person in some way, shape or form. At the same time, is there anyone Joe Biden couldn't have lunch with? Well, that is true. That is true. That's a compliment to anyone listening. It's a compliment. Yeah, no, absolutely.

He is like, I laughed really hard inside and a little bit outside when you brought up the extraordinary chemistry between Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, like two of the most awkward human beings on the planet. But like Joe Biden is just awkward human beings on the planet. But like Joe Biden is just walking human chemistry and can relate to anyone, whether it's another politician, a voter, that woman in the elevator in the New York Times bachelor version of their endorsement process or situation. But the next part of the process, eventually you have a decision, right? And the campaigns go to incredible lengths to protect the secrecy of that decision. And it's worth sort of digging into why they care so much. I think part of it is, I mean, the most important reason is you want to control the news on your

own. Every campaign has a plan for how they're going to maximize that moment, one of those five most important moments that we talked about. This is, particularly if you're running against an incumbent, this is one of the rare days where you get to dominate the coverage. So you want to do that at a time that best serves your campaign, and you want to do it in a time and format that you control. It's going to be a huge part of your fundraising plan because it's a day when people get very engaged. Maybe the person that you picked has a big fundraising base. It was a big fundraising day for the Obama campaign in 08. I think it was probably a huge fundraising campaign for the Clinton campaign in 16. And I'm sure the

Biden fundraising team has thought about this, like how they're going to maximize this to raise money online. And now that they also have a second principle to go around and do fundraising. And the third thing is organizational. Yeah. Right. How do you use it to get volunteers and data? third thing is organizational. How do you use it to get volunteers and data? The Obama campaign in 2008 had this idea that we were going to tell people, you would first hear Obama's decision via text if you signed up for a text message. I didn't remember this. I remember it for a whole host of reasons. But what Jordan Waller, one of our producers, But what Jordan Waller, one of our producers, found is actually the Obama tweet from at BarackObama.com from 2008, where he says, sign up here to find out my VP pick first. And it has still to this day, one retweet.

So it didn't get the attention you need. But we got hundreds of thousands of people to sign up for text messaging, which was a way to get data so we could then reach out to them for fundraising and volunteer organizing and GOTV, et cetera, because a surprise is so important for those reasons. The campaigns do go to extraordinary lengths to protect it. What I think a lot of people don't, a lot of reporters and others listening to our stand is that up until the moment of the announcement, the total number of people on the campaign who know who the pick is, is probably 20? Yeah, maybe, maybe. Five? Maybe. Yeah, total. And so

the most senior people on the campaign, the communications directors, the speech writers, the people doing the events, had no idea. And so what are some of the things that you went through in 2004 or 2008 to keep it secret? Well, in 2004, I mean, this just gives you the sense that I was at all the meetings. I knew everyone that John Kerry had spoken with and spent time with them myself. And I didn't know who it was until I read, was it the New York Post? The New York Post reported that it was Gephardt. That was the one meeting I didn't do. And I knew for a fact that it was down to three or four people.

And we knew there were two things that we knew. We were doing the event from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of course, but also John Kerry's wife, Teresa Hines, is like the queen of Pittsburgh. So we decided to do it in Pittsburgh. And we did it right after the 4th of July so that people would have not really been paying attention, right? People are doing their own shit around 4th of July. No one's like stalking who John Kerry's going to pick.

And we had several sets of placards made that had different names on them. So it was like Kerry Vilsack, Carrie Edwards, Carrie Gephardt, and maybe Carrie Graham. I think those were the four. And one, a reporter, so the New York Post reported that it was Gephardt, which was not true, but it was like the front page of the paper. And another reporter found the placards that had other names on them. So lest John Edwards get a big head and think it had been him all along, it definitely was not. But we had the John Edwards thing, because so much of it happened on like July 3rd and 4th, when people weren't paying that much attention, it was announced, I think the morning of the 5th, I think it was July 5th. It was announced that

morning. Ours was like super over the top choreographed, you know, but back then in 2004, the whole point was, are you on the nightly news? And do you get the cover of Time Magazine? Right? Like what picture is it that shows up? Shut the fuck up. Okay, it was 2004. I'm sorry. We're the same age. So you know, like people like it. I mean, it was 16 years ago. So it was a long time ago. But nothing makes it seem longer ago than the relevance of the Time magazine cover. And the thing is, and remember that John Edwards has this young, beautiful family. And so, of course, the first thing is the reporters are staked out at his house. It's the whole family, airblown, as beautiful as you could imagine, comes out of the house, gets in the car.

They get in the plane, go to Pittsburgh. house, gets in the car, they get in the plane, go to Pittsburgh. And then there is this like, I don't know if it was more like from Little House on the Prairie when Carrie goes rolling down the hill in the beginning or like the Waltons, but like all the families united and were in very like neutral colored clothing and sort of like appeared together outside at the farm in Pittsburgh for the first time. It was very over the top. And then they gave their speech, which was fine, you know, but that to me, the whole thing was the pictures.

The pictures were the important thing of John Kerry and his new, you know, running mate, two of the best sets of teeth in all of Washington, D.C. at this point. And with Barack Obama, you know, can you remember when you knew it was Biden? I don't remember exactly when I knew that it was Biden. The night of. So I was going to, like, this gives you an example of how seriously campaigns take the secrecy.

So in 2000, when I was working for Al Gore, Al Gore was down to Edwards, Kerry, and Lieberman were the three. And Bob Graham, I think. So there were four. And we sent, the campaign sent advanced teams to all four places. And we had just in case, because no one could know who the pick was going to be. And my job at the time as a young 24-year-old was the Northeast press, right? I was the Northeast communications director. So I was overseeing the communications part, at least, of the Lieberman, Connecticut event and the John Kerry, Massachusetts event. I think we did a similar thing in 2008.

I think we had people in Indiana, Richmond, and Delaware. Is that correct? Yeah, I think that's right. We also had to do three different rollouts inside. They're sitting around. There were three speeches someone wrote i can't we i remember pluff brought in a bunch of a small handful of us and told us it was down to these three which everyone kind of knew at that point because i told you

i would never have kept anything from you you may be in trouble with pluff uh 13 years later all's well that ends well yes but you brought in and it was like you but you were in there you knew already i was there john favreau was there and we were told it's these three we need plans for all three right like what's the press plan they're sitting out there somewhere on someone's laptop are speeches from barack obama announcing evan bai and Tim Kaine as vice president. And that was so secret. But we also went through some other subterfuge in the run-up. In the last few weeks or so, the press had really narrowed it down to, I think, basically who were

the actual final three. And that's always worrisome because when you take all of the press resources and you put them on three people, they'll find out more information than if they're spread out on 10. And we were getting very worried that someone would just – which is what ultimately happened is someone just basically guessed and you have a one in three chance of being right. a one in three chance of being right. And earlier in the process, Barack Obama had vetted Chet Edwards, who was a Democratic congressman from Texas, who was on the Veterans Affairs Committee. And no one had known that Chet Edwards had been on the list. And we needed a little distraction to get us the last few days to announcement day. And so at some point, some reporter, I think, called and asked us if Chet Edwards was being considered. And normally we would never answer that question. But I think the way I handled it was we can neither confirm nor deny that Chet Edwards is being considered.

And he had been considered, but he was certainly, as far as I know, not in that final three. So it's like I can neither confirm nor deny that Chet Edwards is being considered. final three. So it's like, I can neither confirm nor deny that Chet Edwards is being considered. Wink, wink, wink. And all of a sudden, like every national outlet sent someone down to Texas. Chet Edwards played it like a champ. Like I think at that point, he certainly knew he was not days away from being the VP, but he was completely game to go along with it. And he created like this little diversion that distracted the press just for a few days. We didn't lie. We didn't say he was being considered. We just didn't say he wasn't being considered.

And we let them overreact on their own. You know that when you explain all this, starting back with Gore and how Gore had Kerry, Edwards, Joe Lieberman, and Graham, and then McCain went to have Lieberman, and then Kerry went to have Edwards and Graham. And then McCain went to have Lieberman and then Kerry went to have Edwards and Graham. You literally have figured out how ABC got the idea for all the bachelor spinoffs. It's like all the secondary people go on to their own franchise, which is which is which that's why a lot of people get considered because it's a great way to lift like John Edwards would not have run for president 2004 if he had not been on Al Gore's shortlist in 2000. That's why this process matters, even for those who were not picked.

Very good. Alyssa, I think that is a great way to end the first episode of That's the Ticket. We will be back next Friday when we talk about the historic stakes of Joe Biden's decision and how it relates to previous picks of female contenders like Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin. Thanks, everyone, so much. is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator,

Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian,

Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.