Kerry circumspect on VP selection after 2000 snub
During the summer of 2000, Senator John F. Kerry shipped off cartons of speeches and personal financial information to Al Gore, then the Democratic presidential nominee. Kerry, one of Gore's potential choices for vice president, also sat for interviews with a group of campaign attorneys, led by Charles F. C. Ruff, who had defended President Clinton during his 1999 impeachment trial.
To the Massachusetts senator's chagrin, though, the vetting process was rife with leaks on the pluses and minuses of the candidates. And in the end, it wasn't Gore who first told Kerry that Joseph I. Lieberman had been picked for the number two spot. It was Jeffrey Lewis, chief of staff to Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who phoned, having heard early-morning news reports.
It wasn't until nearly noon that Kerry got the official notification that he was being passed over.
Kerry's experience during the summer of 2000 has given him definite ideas about how he wants to make the decision on a running mate. "He wants a process that makes the party more unified, not less. He wants it to be confidential and discreet and responsible. And he's incredibly open-minded about it," a top Kerry adviser said yesterday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
That also may explain why Kerry chose James A. Johnson to lead the vice-presidential vetting process. Not only are the two contemporaries -- Johnson, 60, is the same age as Kerry, and they have nearby vacation homes in Ketchum, Idaho. Johnson is respected in government, corporate, and civic circles.
In Washington, where he now works as vice chairman of Perseus LLC, a merchant bank and private equity manager, Johnson once held a famed trifecta -- simultaneously serving as chairman of the
Wherever he goes, his calling cards are methodical decision-making and discretion, associates say.
"Jim has an encyclopedic knowledge of politics, business, the media, Washington, and he has an absolutely inexhaustible depth of contacts," said John Buckley, who first worked against Johnson as spokesman for the 1984 Reagan-Bush Republican ticket but then worked for him as spokesman for Fannie Mae, which Johnson headed from 1991 to 1998. "He will run an operation that will serve Kerry very well in terms of the depth and thoughtfulness of the materials that get put together for Kerry's ultimate consumption."
Tom Nides, a onetime Johnson aide who now serves as managing director of Credit Suisse First Boston in New York, said: "You would have to light him on fire to get him to speak out of school. . . . He'll put a process together. He'll manage it. You won't hear leaks about it."
Indeed, some of Kerry's top campaign advisers were surprised Wednesday when word of Johnson's selection first appeared in "The Note," the daily ABC News political newsletter. Few knew the senator had courted Johnson, and that alone signals that even fewer still will truly be in the know before Kerry makes his announcement, perhaps as early as this spring.
Several aides said they expect the inner circle to include only Johnson, Kerry, Heinz Kerry -- who is close friends with Johnson and his wife, Maxine Isaacs -- as well as perhaps Kerry's brother Cameron, and David McKean, chief of staff of Kerry's Senate office and the person charged with helping the senator participate in the Gore vetting process.
"He will pick somebody who can be the president," said one top Democratic operative. "He's so convinced that he's earned the nomination by dint of his experience that he'll want the same in his running mate. And then he'll want someone he feels like he wants to make the journey with."
It was because Kerry pined for the job himself, and felt angry about how the search ended, that he wore a look of dejection just hours after he learned of the Lieberman selection on Aug. 7, 2000.
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
