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Surprise, Surprise

September 02, 2008 7:35 PM

I think it's a good idea, as we call it, to float names--in other words, put the name out publicly, leak it some way maybe, so it is known around the country that 'Joe Blow' is being considered. Because sometimes you'll get information under the transom that will help you.

That's what former Vice President Walter Mondale told me in July, when I talked to him about how best to go about selecting a running mate.

Dan Quayle told me a few days later what it was like to go through the process as a nominee:

For two weeks they vetted me---and all of my friends, and what I had done, and the Congress for four years, the Senate for eight years, what I had done in college and law school, who my wife was...her family, everything.

I know it may seem hard to believe, but you read that right. Dan Quayle was in Congress four years and the U.S. Senate eight years after that. Yet he nonetheless was seen as a surprise pick by George H.W. Bush--and inexperienced, to boot.

Quayle thinks he knows why:

In my particular case, the media was surprised. They don't like to be surprised--they want to be part of the process. They weren't part of the process, and I think they held it against George Bush, and therefore they held it against me.

Now comes John McCain, with a last-minute decision to select as his running mate a nominee who surprised almost everyone. And by everyone, I mean not only the media (how many times did you read the name "Sarah Palin" on this blog?), but also some of the McCain's most senior advisers--as well as lawyers on his on vetting team who were rushed to Alaska early last week to interview her.

To call Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a "surprise pick" almost doesn't do the term justice. And what we're seeing now unfolding is the drip, drip, drip of disclosure, because Palin was not on the short list until only recently--and in fact skyrocketed to the top of it almost at the same time she was being rushed onto the national stage.

Less than 24 hours after McCain sat down with Palin last Thursday for their first substantive and serious discussion---when he also he offered her the job---he introduced her to the nation.

Mondale again:

You've got to be very sure as you come close to a decision that you have ventilated all the possibilities of negative attacks on your vice presidential nominee. And sometimes things happen where things come out later that make the choice very difficult, untenable, and different than would have been your choice if you had known the full facts.

Mondale was talking about his good friend Tom Eagleton, the Missouri Senator whose treatment for depression led to the derailment of his nomination as George McGovern's running mate in 1972.

Quayle:

The one thing you don't want to have happen out there is a big surprise during the campaign, oh my gosh, we didn't know this. It didn't show up in the vetting process. And he didn't tell us. You don't want that to happen. You assume everything's gonna come out. It may not, but assume that it's all gonna come out.

The McCain campaign is insisting it thoroughly examined Palin and expects no surprises, and there's no indication A.B. Culvahouse pulled any punches when he sat down with her last week.

And Culvahouse knows how to vet--having been burned once before. As White House Counsel to Ronald Reagan, he and other top Reagan lawyers failed to unearth the truth about federal appeals court Judge Douglas Ginsburg's marijuana use when Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court.

After Ginsburg was forced to withdraw in 1987, Culvahouse subjected the next nominee--federal appeals court Judge Anthony Kennedy--to several hundred intrusive, deeply personal, cringe-inducing questions, focusing largely on sex, drugs and money. Did you have sex in junior high? High school? College? If so, how many different partners? Where? Did you use contraception? Were there any pregnancies? Any abortions? Did you contract venereal disease? Ever engage in any aberrational sexual activity? Has your wife ever had an abortion? Have the two of you engaged in "kinky sex?"

These were all actual questions posed to a nominee to the Supreme Court. And after all the detailed questions about mental health and drugs and money--and weird inquiries like, "have you ever engaged in cruelty to animals," there were big catch-alls. Culvahouse and the legal team asked Kennedy what was the most unpleasant or embarrassing thing that ever happened to him in high school. In college. In law school. As an adult. Then they turned to his family. What are the answers for your wife to the questions asked of you? For your children? Your siblings?

Those types of questions, if put to Palin, would have turned up things like her teenaged daughter's pregnancy and her husband's DUI. The campaign says it knew these things.

At this point on Tuesday night, the full story of the McCain campaign's vetting is not known. That full story is significant, because it would illuminate whether Palin was, in fact, a last-minute addition to the shortest of the short lists---and thereby a last-minute choice for VP by John McCain.

There are several cuts candidates make as they move onto shorter and shorter lists. At first, dozens and dozens of possible candidates are subjected to a general records search. That big group is then winnowed down to a more manageable "intermediate" short-list of less than two dozen---all of whom receive an intrusive 70-question questionnaire.

That intermediate group of 15 or so is then winnowed down to the four or five finalists (the "real" short list ). It's not practical to fully vet all 15, so the candidate has to decide which four or five finalists makes the cut---and are then subjected to intensive interviews and asked to provide medical and detailed financial records, including tax returns.

Here, we've been told Palin was in the intermediate group that filled out that questionnaire months ago. But what we haven't been told is when she made it to the smaller group that got the intensive vet--a group that included people like Joe Lieberman, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and maybe Tom Ridge.

We don't know why it took months and months after she filled out the questionnaire for Culvahouse to sit down and interview her--which he did last week. We don't know why she wasn't interviewed back in early August--as you might expect, if she had actually made McCain's first cut to that final short list.

But here's what we do know. As Mondale points out, there's nothing like a national spotlight to flush out other potential pitfals. And Palin's sudden introduction to the nation--and now the legions of investigative reporters swarming across Alaska, combing through public records, newspaper clippings and listening to the whisper of every rumor--make it hard to imagine that we've been surprised for the last time. Whether the McCain campaign is in for a surprise or not is another question.

September 2, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9)

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Posted by: hopesprings52 | Sep 2, 2008 7:48:36 PM

Posted by: J | Sep 2, 2008 7:54:56 PM

Posted by: Mary | Sep 2, 2008 8:40:36 PM

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Posted by: bombem | Sep 3, 2008 2:10:57 PM

Posted by: bombem | Oct 7, 2008 6:10:18 PM

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