Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [92]
I said nothing when Bill Taylor came to the house. I said nothing as we turned over our financial records to a stranger. And I said nothing when a car with tinted windows picked John up at our house—within walking distance of the Gore residence—and drove him to his interview with the Vice President. We weren’t tense. It was, we knew, an extremely long shot. Our first clue to that, of course, was that no pundit, no gossip hound, no insider ever even whispered John’s name. And the second clue was that the names that were mentioned in the press—John Kerry, who had been in the Senate for twenty years, Evan Bayh, who had been a two-term governor, Joe Lieberman, the longtime senator, George Mitchell, former majority leader of the Senate, Bob Graham, the Florida senator, Jeanne Shaheen, the personable governor of New Hampshire—were, well, all more likely choices. John thought he was there as a fallback. In the post-Lewinsky world, Al Gore was understandably intent on finding a running mate who was not vulnerable. So John was the untarnished choice, we figured, in case other candidates collapsed under the vetting. Apparently we were wrong.
John jogged with Evan Bayh regularly. They are about the same age, both easygoing, and both were new to the Senate in 1999. And now both were on Al Gore’s short list. When John left the Senate gym to run with Evan one Monday, he and Evan—in private—could talk about what they hadn’t mentioned in public. They talked about Gore’s selection process. Evan had had his interview with Gore the preceding Friday, and John’s was scheduled for the next day. Evan, who could have resisted giving John any advantage and so could have stayed quiet, instead told him about his interview as they ran. It had been very low-key, he said, very friendly. They’d just talked about family and history they shared. He’d thought Gore would be tougher, but the Vice President hadn’t asked him anything hard. So that’s what John expected when he went for his interview.
When John arrived at the Vice President’s residence on Tuesday morning, he was taken to a pleasant sitting room. John waited there for Gore, looking at the paintings and the photographs. Sarah Gore, one of Al and Tipper’s daughters, came in, and then the Vice President, and John engaged in the same idle chatter Evan had described. But then Sarah left, and the room went quiet. John broke the silence, pointing to one of the photographs: “Is that your dad?” Gore glanced at the photograph and in one breath said, “Yeah-now-can-you-answer-a-question-for-me?” “Sure,” John said, a little taken aback by the shift in tone. And it was about to get worse. The Vice President asked him how he would explain to the world that he had picked somebody who’d been in office for a year and a half to be a heartbeat from the presidency. The first question out of the box. John talked about the attributes of leadership as he saw them—honesty, steadfastness, strength in times of adversity. He’d survived that question, but the whole interview was like that—hostile, difficult. Gore asked about everything, policy, family, politics, how to distance himself from Clinton’s conduct. On his lap there was a notebook—of the vetting material, John assumed—and he flipped through the pages and peppered John with questions. The tone never changed, and John only knew it was over when the Vice President stood up. They walked to the car, Gore thanked him for coming, and then he surprised John by adding, “You should feel very good about this interview.” Did he mean that, or was he trying to cheer up the new kid? We didn’t know.
That afternoon John ran with Evan again, and Evan asked how the interview had gone. They were very close, and John told him the truth: It was really tough. Evan listened thoughtfully as John related the questions, and then he said, “That’s bad news for me. He’s serious about you, and he wasn’t serious about me. That’s what that means.” Until Evan perceptively said this, neither John nor I knew how to read the interview. But Evan knew how to read Al Gore. John was still