Page 21 of 107 Days

When we moved into the vice president’s residence, I’d worked with a craftsman to design a table for the dining room.

It comprised three squares that could fit together as one long table for big dinners or staff meetings, but could also be separated for smaller, more intimate occasions, with drop leaves that could be raised to make them round.

On Saturday morning we arranged the room for the next day’s interviews.

There was just a single square table in the center of the room.

I would sit on one side; my potential VP would sit on the other.

Either Sheila Nix or JOD would be on the sofa across the room, out of the candidate’s line of sight.

They would alternate as my second pair of eyes and ears.

I didn’t want to overstaff what was already a stressful situation.

Very few people have ever made this decision.

I called Hillary and Bill Clinton, because they knew what it was like and would give me candid and confidential advice.

One of your strengths, they said, is that you bring a joyful energy to the campaign.

You have to choose someone who won’t work against that.

They told me to be aware that over the course of the campaign, people will be able to tell if it is a genuinely good relationship or a political marriage of convenience.

Bill: “You have to level with them and watch how they answer.”

Bill said that Al Gore was good for him “because he knew things I didn’t know.

We were as different as daylight and dark and it worked.

” They both emphasized that I’d be offering this person the chance of a lifetime, so they’d better know it.

If they were someone dying for immediate public recognition, it might not be the job for them.

They might have to swallow a lot of crap.

My staff and I spent much of the day going over the briefing books on each finalist, working out what we needed to glean from this final interview. We had the data. The main question remaining was: Are they going to be compatible?

I’d recruited my invaluable social secretary and residence manager, Storm Horncastle, to collect each finalist in her ’99 Jeep Wrangler.

The press was used to seeing her coming and going from the residence, so if her passenger ducked, no one would know he was here. We dubbed it Operation Veep in a Jeep.

I had an ulterior motive for recruiting Storm for this job.

Storm is from Norway, not especially political, and had mostly worked in embassies prior to taking the job with me at the vice president’s residence.

She has an exquisitely tuned sense of protocol, is an excellent judge of character, and does not hold back her opinions.

I thought it would be telling to see how each finalist treated her.

Over the years I’d learned it’s one thing how people treat me, it’s another to see how they behave toward someone they perceive as less powerful.

I’m especially sensitive to this because, as a child, I saw how my mother, a small brown woman with a foreign accent, would be treated in a fancy department store and other public places: as if she didn’t belong or couldn’t afford to be there.

She was a distinguished scientist doing groundbreaking research, but often I saw her encounter derision and disrespect.

I needed to know that my running mate was a person who valued the dignity of everyone and would take a moment to show it.