Obama's Staff Reveals How a Vice President Is Selected

there are five moments that matter in a presidential campaign the convention speech the three debates at the vice presidential selection now in this very strange pandemic related can campaign that we're in the convention is going to be different and may be diminished who the f knows of 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 gonna 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 I'm Dan Pfeiffer and I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco we were both involved in the selection process of when Barack Obama to put Joe Biden on the ticke in 2008 and ELISA even helped run the process for John Edwards in 2004 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 ran this process you have run this process for John Kerry when you picked John Edwards we will not hold that selection against you we you helped run this process when Barack Obama picture Biden will give you full credit for that one we want to dig into two parts of that process that I think will help under skip people an inside view of how the Biden campaign will go about running this process in making decision part one is vetting which is some people talk about all the time who's being vetted who's that being but I want to I want to talk talking 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 then what are the campaigns do to ensure that it stays secret so let's start with vetting so once a candidate narrows down their list the campaign begins an intense vetting process can you let's start by talking about what that process looks like who's who's conducting it and what does it mean for the people who were 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 have a leave at those many that many people but you want to see sort of what are your options what's interesting and you know I'm sure everybody has their outside the box you know two or three people that would be you know 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 that anything lately and a team of advisers that actually you know for the purposes of secrecy do run it sort of separate from the actual campaign like you'll remember whether it was you know before Mary Beth Cahill who is the campaign manager to John Kerry 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 big 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 sort of any sort of publicly available information ultimately some people get disqualified in this part of the process then there is for our perp and 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 issue 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 and after that there are usually a series of sit-down meetings once you get I would say - less than 10 finalists in quotes 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 yeah and Eric Holder the people in Joe Biden's committee it's a mix of people including former senator chris dodd who's a close personal friend of joe biden's serve together for many years congresswoman lisa blonde 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 is the longer list and then there's the short list in the end we've we're able to discover in some ways who's on the short list because in one way in the which the media has gotten pretty savvy about this in recent years as they note 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 because you have that it is 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 you know 10 to 15 years of tax records you have to hand over personal writings you may have right which in this day and age maybe some archive of your tweets or blog posts that mayor that exists 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 and 1992 by Bill Clinton by Al Gore in 2000 and then by John Kerry 2004 Bob Graham used to take detailed notes of every single thing he did every day like what he had for lunch who we 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've possibly put in there like Excel lunch bribery scheme in the afternoon I am it 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's specific he asked for the spelling of my name because I Alyssa's complicated and um and uh we think he put the 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 the detail by which this processes and how burgers and you have teams of attorneys right and it's both attorneys who you know this 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 you know pay their taxes appropriately did they take some deduction that may be legal but would look very bad politically could run up against the you know the policies of the nominee you know those sorts of things help our listeners understand what it is they are looking for like what would be disqualifying per se 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 um has everyone paid their taxes have they paid them on time you know their spouse like people forget their spouse their kids they're all part of the equation if spouse of whoever the 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 so I would say taxes disqualifying writings any sort of like fringe beliefs you know I guess like like are you a Satanist I don't know I mean like there are weird things that we've seen before and that they're so available now on Twitter but um those are the big those are the big things I think particularly an era were you as someone like Donald Trump as 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 there can be all sorts of problems in someone's past but if there's a good explanation that campaign can prepare their defense for it in advance than they are okay with it because there is no perfect person my people have right people's views have evolved over time there they have said dumb things they have you know maybe mess 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 I think there are two historical examples where the vetting process did not work that I think helped illustrate what it is that these campaigns are that the binding campaign is gonna be looking for us they look at the list of the shortlist and so well 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 there's another example that I think is the 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 in eighteen 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 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 I mean in the modern era where we are right now someone having gone through depression and saw dinky tree before it would certainly not be disqualifying correct no no I can't imagine that it would but it does go to the surprise right like obviously the world has changed since to that since 1972 but what was the big problem from the government campaign was that they didn't know they were not perfect Harold for it and it's interesting how that process goes back can you go back and read the histories of it which is McGovern was a huge underdog to Nixon everyone thought next one's gonna cruise to reelection 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 he negotiated 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 down it's listen 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 where you're like this is this is what you were trying to avoid when we talk about Sarah Palin what you're really trying to avoid is Thomas Eagleton right right and you know 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 whatever let if I were being vetted someone talked to my doctor but that's a whole other thing um but no he and you know back then they 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 was your calling card it was your bond and so um you know but yeah they were pretty clear that you put 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 and they were an elected office and I think that back then you know especially especially back then that being an elected office kind of meant you were already vetted you know and I think that we assumed that too you know on the scale of 0 to 100 I think being a current elected official probably now gets you to like 50 percent right but there's maybe 50 percent 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 need to bring forward to make sure that like you said if there is a there's an issue that's not disqualifying it can be disqualifying if you don't get out in front of it let's talk about Palin for a sec because the Palin vetting is perhaps the most famous failure in American history it was chronicle of her in a in a movie an HBO it was actually it was so bad there was an HBO movie about it with Julianne Moore is that right Julianne Moore who played Sarah Palin who I believe won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Sarah Palin so like that when you begin the vetting process one of your goal should be like you want to pass the Eagleton test which is they should make it more than 18 days it which you really want to pass the Palin test when it's over it didn't blow up in your face so bad that HBO wanted 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 advisers thought that was a catastrophic idea as Joe Lieberman was a pro-choice independent at the time his advisors were like this is a terrible idea and they went for and like you and I have talked about that like they went for outside the box right they went for let's make noise you know they they have this what I mean look when you describe her I mean when they announced her we were like god I hope we're not I mean cuz 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's 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 any initial trove of people who were deeply vetted and she was done on an accelerated schedule I mean they miss things that were literally malpractice I mean the fact that she had said that she was a date 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 but they thought was some sort of pay to play situation it's unclear whether they actually knew that her seventeen-year-old daughter was pregnant when they did this they said that 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 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 they underestimated the press in a very big way and I think they underestimated sort of the pass 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 so 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 work and then there is the in-depth investigation piece that involves the personal records the tax returns excite all right and the next part is an interview process so that interview process includes obviously attorneys at the beginning who has 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 what other interviews and obviously the process ends in an interview with the nominee in this case to Biden what what are the interviews that happened in the middle of that process so I think that so one the you have the vetting like people they fill out the form 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 in or like do you want to be considered 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 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 candidates like okay let's let's narrow this list down and you know even fewer people so that most I would my guess would be that moment from my experience is that most 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 called 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 there's like a final conversation with who the candidate who 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 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 a person is to get that job for for President Obama it was other than the actual immediate vetting team it was David Axelrod and David Plouffe and for John Kerry you know I I'm heart I've thought about this and I think it was maybe just Mary Beth Cahill who was the 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 the it speaks to how shrouded in secrecy this process really is where it is happening like 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 shortlist 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 if I am elected president my my cabinet my administration will look like the country and I commit that I will in fact appoint a I pick a woman to be vice president so because politics as it is you just lopped off like 70 percent of Democratic politicians right and then and then you find out as we mentioned potentially when people 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 and it is incredibly important to the campaign's to shreds you 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 all and then the secrecy of the decision it's once it's made and how you keep that secret but like as you mentioned there's a million moving pieces here you have very prominent people recognizable to any reporter in the entire country in allow the public doing meetings with vetting attorneys doing meetings with presidential candidates who are being followed at least a normal world by a Plane full of reporters you have political advisors like Mary Beth like Axelrod like plot who were recognizable to every reporter in America mean with candidates it was your job for Kerry and Obama to make sure that process happened in seeker can you talk about some of the specific not that I want to sort of put all of the Biden campaigns business out on on the street here but so you talk about some 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 so it wasn't as guarded I think as it was until John Kerry 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 did it was looking like John Kerry and I know this because I had started working for John Kerry 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 I worked on this in three ways you've worked for yeah nominees picking someone and someone who was the runner-up 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 he was I will use my words I'm not sure that he would say this but it was 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's stung you know I think that that really stung and so fast forward a couple years when he's looking for a vice president he was adamant that the person who sort of arranged all these meetings he 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 simple person he does not like complications so we dealt with three people with 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 probably like 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 but so 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 we're 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 office to see if people were coming in and out which I think it's completely related to the fact that I think for a long period of time in The Sopranos Tony Soprano met with he 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 there's a David Shea specific problem that the press was following well I caught on to Sopranos a little later so that's entirely possible but so some of like the best so my favorite with my favorite story of all so again like I said I stayed in random motels I would meet with these people most and the thing is most people who are being considered will do whatever you tell them to do like they will they will meet you in the you know sixth floor in the back right hand corner of a parking garage if you tell them to do that someone actually did that 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 I 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 so I John Kerry had arrived and I went to tell the Secret Service officer whose name I remembered it's Bob Slama 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 it when 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 he very diminished sense of smell which the Secret Service knew and I did not and so it was very embarrassing but you know it's John Kerry's graduate took like champ just went in I mean it's it's been reported but the meeting with John Edwards was just like bananas we went to such extremes that Madeleine 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 um that is a and you know what again took it like a champ he's like a list I mean I 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 C 1 C 2 and C 3 for the three people that that Barack Obama was going to meet with the three people were Tim Kaine Senator Joe Biden Joe Biden and Evan Bayh former senator from Indiana but like Evan Bayh one of those people who I thought was very aloof super on the program about following all of our instructions to the tee and when I say our it was me and Molly Buford because you'll remember um 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 um but Evan Bayh 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 gonna need some private planes and I need to like if you want this done right we can't we can't skimp and he was like okay fine so let's think of the private plane thing for a second yeah I think that's important to people perspective it's like it's so important I think this process is being watched so closely then if obviously if let's say Barack Obama were in Wisconsin and then Joe Biden or Evan Bayh or Tim Kaine was seen getting on a plane to fly to Milwaukee every reporter would know they're being you know and so right you know that so that's part of it but but then private planes are not a cure-all because there's out there a handful of reporters who know how to track private plane tail numbers there are reporters who will you don't ask the campaign say there's this plane flying from you know let's take your vitamin from Delaware where Joe Biden lives to wherever Barack Obama is 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 gonna 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 deft to even think about checking at like the departure for a certain callsign for an airport you know like when 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 Bayh was in Washington DC but you know DC is much harder to track 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 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 shioda was in charge of that one and so people and that's the other thing she was like nobody 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 right she was from Minnesota and so we had figured out because of Barack Obama's travel schedule we were gonna 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 a.m. and remember we told everyone to be incognito incognito Joe Biden was in his aviators and a bomber jacket and a baseball hat he looks 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 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 worth like you gotta abide the rules here and he he thought he was I mean he wasn't trying to be whatever but I think he missed under he he he misunderstands how identifiable he and his aviators and that Perley grin and that wave can be to people so but luckily nobody knew if 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 illis pandemic he's not doing a lot of events on the road where he can have serve dishes meetings with people and in hotel rooms or parking garages or wherever else the modern-day Alyssa Mastromonaco would schedule those things how is 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 but 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 even 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 a is that their chemistry in person was so extraordinary that it like shot him to the top of the list and also the thing it's different for most people other than George HW 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 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 say 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 right you know cuz i i i say this half in jest when i when we talk about what factors Joe Biden will put into this but what I think may lie people may not know is that when Joe Biden when Brock 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 gonna have to have lunch with one day a week for four to eight years and like that's a big leap of faith with someone you've only had a couple of zoom calls with time I do imagine there might be some serious efforts underway to try to get these people in person in some way shape or form eventually you have a decision right and they 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 and they part of part of it is I mean the most important reasons you want to control the news on your own every campaign has that plan for how they're gonna maximize that moment that what that one of those five moment five most important moments that we talked about how they're gonna maximize it and it Matt they maximize there are three dimensions in which they maximize it 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 gonna 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 you know it was a big fun dressing day for the bombing campaign in o8 I think it was probably a huge fundraising campaign for the Clinton campaign and sixteen and I'm sure the Biden fundraising team has thought about that it's like how they're gonna 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 right how do you use it to get volunteers and data the Obama campaign in 2008 had this idea that we were going to you 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 wall our one of our producers found is actually the Obama from at Barack Obama calm from 2008 where he says sign up here to find out my VP pick first and it has still to this day one retweet it didn't get any 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 and volunteer organizing and geo TV etc what I think a lot of people don't lot of reporters and others listening are saying 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 25 yet maybe maybe 20 total and so the int like they can't the most senior people on the campaign the communications directors the speech writers the people doing the events have no idea and so like 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 until I read the was at the New York Post the New York Post reported that it was Gephardt that was one that was the one meeting I didn't do and they reported that it was Gephardt and I knew for I knew for a fact that it was down to three or four people and it was such a 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 Hinze is like the queen of Pittsburgh so we decided to do it in Pittsburgh and we did it right after the fourth of July so that people would have not really been paying attention right people are doing their own around fourth of July no one's like stalking who John Kerry's gonna pick and we had several sets of placards made that had different names on them so it was like Carrie Vilsack carrie edwards carrie Gephardt and maybe Carrie Graham I think those were the four and the New York Post reported that it was Gephardt which was not true and the 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 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 fifth I think it was July 5th it was announced that morning we had the whole 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 you get the cover of Time magazine right like what pictures if it shows up shut the up okay it was 2004 I'm sorry we're the same age so you know like people I mean it was 16 years ago so I was like to have a go but he makes it seem longer ago than the relevance of the magazine cover and the thing is it's and remember that John Edwards has this like young beautiful family and so of course the first thing is the reporters are staked out at his house is the whole family wind you know air blown as like as beautiful as you could imagine comes out of the 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 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 DC 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 that night the night off so I was gonna like this is a gives you an example of how seriously campaign sake the secrecy so in 2000 when I was working for Al Gore Al Gore was down to Edwards Kerry and Lieberman were the three admit Bob Graham I think it said to me of the reform 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 pic was going to be so and I my job at the time as a young 24 year old was the northeast part of the press right I was a northeast communications director so I was like 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 we had to do three different rollouts inside like they're sitting around there are there were three speeches someone wrote I can't wait I remember applause brought in a bunch of a small handful of us and told us that it was down to these three which everyone kinda knew at that point but because I told you I would never have kept anything from you you may be in trouble with POIs 13 years later all's well that ends well yes but he brought in I was like you about you were in their unity 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 were sitting out there somewhere on someone's laptop our speeches from Barack Obama announcing Evan Bayh and Tim Kaine as vice president and that was so secret but like the we'd also you know we also went through some other subterfuge in the run-up in the like in the last few weeks or so the press had really narrowed it down to I think basically the fine who were the actual final three and that's always worrisome because when you take the all of the press resources and you put them on three people you can find it they'll find out more information than if they're spread out on ten right and we were getting okay very worried that someone would just which is what ultimately happened to someone just basically guessed and you know you have a one in three chance of being right and earlier in the process Barack Obama had Brock Obama's list like larger list was kind of well-known but he 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 to we need a little distraction to get us the last few days to announcement day and so at some point we decided to like reporters some reporter I think called and asked us if Chet Edwards was being considered and normally we would never ask answer that question but I think it's the way I handed it was we could never neither confirm nor deny that Chet Edwards is being considered and he had been considered but I think was certainly as far as I know not on that final three so it's like I can neither confirm nor deny that Chet Edwards is being considered a 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 probably I don't know whether we ever met with Barack Obama didn't meet with Barack Obama as you said so he certainly knew he was not days away from being the VP but he was completely game to go along with it and he like played it up like a storm he created like this little diversion that distracted the press 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 explained all this starting back with gore and how Gore had Kerry Edwards Joe Lieberman and who was the last one Graham Bagram and then 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 spin-offs it's like all the secondary people go on to their own franchise which that's why a lot of people get considered because it's a great way to live like it was a 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 [Music] [Music]

Channel: Pod Save America

Views: 213,862

Keywords: How is a vice president selected, how to pick a vice president, Biden's vice presidential pick, vice presidential process, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, Alyssa Mastromonaco, behind the scenes at the White House, That's the Ticket, podcast, who will be Biden's vice president, who is Biden's vice president, vice president

Id: IODyGZdTeIU

Length: 49min 55sec (2995 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020