She called security and we all searched the hotel. I went back to the pool area, where I saw him and he asked, “What’s going on?” He was carrying a bunch of clothes and there wer c ane four buck-naked kids trailing behind him. He explained that he had taken them to a little beach for a moonlight swim in a pond where big signs warned, do not swim. alligators.
In the morning, with the families set to spend the day at the Animal Kingdom theme park, Jim Johnson, Kerry’s lead scout in the hunt for a running mate, called a little after eight o’clock. He said he wanted to go over the issues that Kerry was considering as he settled on his choice. His first concern had to do with whether his vice president was serious about the work of governing. The second was long-term loyalty. (Kerry wanted a guarantee that if they lost, Edwards would not run against him for the presidential nomination in 2008.) The third and final concern was about Edwards’s stand on the issues. Kerry wanted to make sure that his partner at the top of the ticket would present a united front with him.
It sounded to me as if the Kerry team was giving Edwards a chance to get the answers right. With visions of life in the vice president’s mansion in my head, I urged him to go see Kerry even if he had to take a bus. I was surprised when he wouldn’t be moved on the private jet issue and surprised again when they actually gave in to his demand. We spent the morning at the Animal Kingdom, where several rides take you through pretend wilderness settings around the world. After lunch with the families at the Rainforest Cafe, I accompanied the senator back to the hotel for a change of clothes, then drove him to the private airport. He was excited but also irritated to be called back for what seemed like another job interview. When we got to the airfield, we drove to a small jet that was waiting with its engines running so the cabin could be air-conditioned. The senator went up the steps, stopped at the door, and gave me a wave before ducking inside. I noticed that he looked nervous.
Only John Kerry and John Edwards can say for certain what happened in their meeting later that day. I know that Edwards stopped first at his house and went for a jog. The get-together was held at the home of Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Clinton, and Edwards was driven there in a town car rented in my name. The windows were so heavily tinted, no one could see him. According to Edwards, who filled me in, Senator Kerry was friendlier than he had been before and impressed that Edwards had interrupted his vacation to have the meeting and that he was heading back to Orlando that same night so he could be with his family.
It’s hard to imagine John Kerry having a relaxed conversation about something as ordinary as Walt Disney World, but according to Edwards, when he told him that he’d spent the morning at the Animal Kingdom, Kerry’s eyes lit up and he said he had loved visiting the park with his daughters. During the rest of the time they spent together, they discussed the upcoming campaign, which would be both a referendum on George Bush and a chance for the Democrats to present some new ideas, and the overall political landscape. Kerry did ask Edwards whether, in the event that they lost, he would challenge him in the 2008 primaries. Edwards proudly told me he let Kerry think a challenge was unlikely but in lawyerly fashion left himself an out.
Besides impressing Kerry with his commitment to family, Edwards believed he scored big points when he was told that both Dick Gephardt and Senator Bob Graham had said they would be able to accomplish more as vice president because they were experienced in the ways of Washington. Edwards didn’t make any counterclaims for himself or try to criticize these other contenders. Instead, he noted that people with their skills and extensive experience would be perfect picks to serve in somewhat lesser jobs in a Kerry-Edwards administration.
I heard all about this when I went to the airport near Disney World to meet the jet that brought Edwards back that night. While I waited outside the private terminal, I watched a couple of maintenance workers who were hanging around for this one last arrival, playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and reveling in the fact that they were getting paid overtime. The jet finally landed at 12:50 A.M., and as the senator came inside, I could see he had relaxed with a little wine. He introduced himself to the card players (as if they really cared who he might be) and then said, “Man, I gotta piss.” (The senator was irked that the jet was too small to have a decent toilet.)
Once we got in the car, Edwards refused to tell me what had happened until I assured him that everyone he had left behind had enjoyed themselves during the day. Once I’d done this, he told me about the car with the tinted windows, Albright’s house, Kerry’s interest in the Animal Kingdom, and the substance of the conversation. He thought it was ridiculous that Kerry had asked him to promise he wouldn’t run in 2008 but considered the rest of the meeting a terrific success. Kerry had stopped just short of offering him the job, but before the session was over he’d shown Edwards a mock-up of a Kerry-Edwards campaign logo: red, white, and blue, with an American flag.
It was about two o’clock when we got to the hotel. We went upstairs together, and as we split to go to our rooms we exchanged a victorious high five, like a couple of UNC ballplayers celebrating a three-pointer. The next day, the national press was reporting that John Kerry had conducted a secret meeting with the person leading the contest to join the ticket. Several commentators noted that since John Edwards was at Walt Disney World with his family, he was almost certainly out of the running. But one source, ABC’s The Note, offered a hint by posting the mileage from Washington, D.C., to Disney World. I never figured out how they knew and why they didn’t follow up on it.
Several days passed while Kerry made his final pick. The Youngs and the Edwardses went home to North Carolina, and at both houses the phones rang continuously. For four days, I couldn’t say anything as friends, colleagues, neighbors, and members of the press called to ask questions and share rumors, the most persistent being the idea that the only one on the Kerry team opposed to Edwards was Teresa Heinz Kerry. Gradually, her resistance was overcome (or set aside), and by the Fourth of July, Edwards seemed to be in the lead, according to everyone we spoke to.
On that day, I accompanied c I the senator on his annual “Beach Walk,” which was really just a stroll along the ocean with stops to talk to voters and their families. In private moments, we discussed where we might hold the first Kerry-Edwards rally in North Carolina and decided we could get the biggest crowd in Raleigh. Robbins was now way too small.
Two days later, in the early morning hours, deliverymen working from trucks that stopped at newsstands throughout the New York region hurled onto the sidewalk bound stacks of the day’s New York Post. On the cover was a big photo of Dick Gephardt and John Kerry below the headline KERRY’S CHOICE.
In Raleigh, my phone rang at about six A.M. A friend whose father was a bigwig in the national Republican Party practically shouted into the phone, “Congratulations!” He then explained that his father had received word that Edwards was on the ticket. The source was completely reliable, he said, and the New York Post was as wrong as the Chicago Daily Tribune had been with its DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN screamer in 1948. The Republicans must have had a very good line into the Kerry operation, because I called Senator Edwards immediately and heard that he was still waiting to hear the news.
I got off the phone with the senator in order to keep his line open and practically shook with anticipation. Although the senator was the focus of the decision, and no one outside my immediate circle even knew I would be affected, I felt as though the rest of my life depended on what John Kerry was thinking. Desperate for information, I called Fred Whitfield, a friend of mine who just happened to be Dick Gephardt’s neighbor in Washington. (A close friend of Michael Jordan’s, Whitfield was then an executive with the Washington Wizards basketball team.) Whitfield said that Gephardt was in town and some media folks were camped out by his door. But the mood in this crowd was not positive. This suggested that the Post was wrong and Edwards was in.