John had to begin doing this dance just a few days after Obama clinched the nomination. He was speaking to a town hall meeting in Nebraska when a woman stood up and asked him what he would do about the fact that foreigners were allowed to run for office in this country, and why we weren't arresting them and deporting them to Africa where they belonged. John visibly winced at that, and then went into his little song-and-dance. It was a two-parter, where he first gave his 'I don't know where you got your information... ' speech, followed up by 'The real issue is not whether Barack Obama is an American. He is. The real issue is that he's a radical liberal... ' He would then highlight the differences between Obama's positions, taken from Obama's primary battle, and his own positions. I liked that approach, and decided I would use it as well.
The next big campaign events would be the conventions. The timing on these is always complicated by the fact that the Presidential race is also the same year as the Summer Olympics. In general, you end up with the conventions sandwiching the Olympics, with the challenger going right before, and the incumbent right after. I knew there had been some talk of doing both after, but that would have put the Republican convention into September, and that was too late. I told the RNC to select the standard choice, the week after the Olympics, which left the Dems to go the week before.
This was aided by the fact that I had no interest in attending the Olympics. Marilyn and I just weren't interested. If we went it would be as representatives of the United States, and that puts a different spin on things. Four years ago I had sent John McCain to Greece to represent the country at the Athens Olympics while I campaigned. This time the Olympics were in Beijing, and were supposed to show how Communist China was such a modern and thriving nation, their 'coming out party' for the world. Total bullshit, of course. By keeping our deficit levels down to a net zero during my administration, the Chinese didn't have anywhere near the influence on our foreign policy that they wanted to have. I didn't need to make nice with them.
I told John that he and Cindy could go if they wanted; I wasn't going, and if he didn't go, they would have to make do with our local ambassador. John and his wife went to the opening ceremonies and came home a day later to continue campaigning. The Beijing newspapers and television, all state controlled, reported this as a snub. Will dismissed this at the next press conference; simply reporting that time constraints prohibited either John or me from attending any further. I hadn't traveled to Beijing on any sort of foreign relations visit either, and hadn't hosted the Chinese President either. We had met, cordially, at a couple of Asian conferences, but that was it. They had an outsized opinion of their importance at times, and thought that the South China Sea was their personal lake. I made sure that our Navy sailed through there repeatedly to remind them it wasn't.
Chapter 173: The Home Stretch
The Democratic convention was scheduled to begin Monday August 4 and run through Thursday August 7, and would be held in Denver. The Olympics would begin the next day, Friday August 8, and run for just over two weeks, to close on Sunday August 24. Right after that, the Republicans would take the field, with a convention in St. Paul running from Monday August 25 through Thursday August 28. After that the campaigns would begin in earnest, and it would be tooth and nail for the next nine weeks.
There is a certain rhythm and protocol to the convention speeches, on both sides of the aisle. Normally, the first night the previous President speaks. In this case, I was speaking, and Bill Clinton, despite the cloud he had gone out of office under was speaking to the Democrats. The second night is the keynote speaker, supposed to throw out lofty rhetoric and nothing of substance. The third night is the Vice Presidential choice, and the fourth and last night is the Presidential nominee himself.
Barack Obama picked Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his V.P. choice, a solid liberal white male choice. From what we could figure out, he couldn't stand Hillary, and they were both smarting from the bitter primary fight. She was actually their keynote speaker on Tuesday, trying to rebuild the bridges she had burned during the primaries. From what I remembered from my first shot, he would end up with her in the Cabinet.
John McCain had been all over the playing field trying to figure out his Vice Presidential selection. He debated picking one of his primary opponents, like Huckabee (a favorite of the conservative base) or Romney (a favorite of the business and liberal wings). He also looked at some of the second tier candidates who had dropped out early, like Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, who had been a Governor and a Cabinet member, and a few Senators, Governors, and Cabinet members. Ultimately he selected Jeb Bush. I had suggested Jeb, but I wasn't the only one to do so. Unlike on my first round, George hadn't had a chance to sully the Bush family name, so Jeb was a very viable choice, and acceptable to the base. Mitt would be the keynote speaker on Tuesday.
I met with the other three men shortly after John got back from Beijing, to discuss our speeches and the tone they wanted to set. John was, of course, the boss on all this, but we all needed to be on the same page. The tone was the one that we had pushed in 2004, and that John had kept pushing this time. We were the grownups, the professionals, and we knew what we were doing. Why mess with success? Send a winning team back for another four years.
Each of us had a different take on this for our individual speeches. Mitt was going for the requisite 'bringing the Party together' speech, how he was behind John 110%, and how their differences weren't that significant. He was helped in this by the fact that after he dropped out, he threw his delegates over to John, whereas Mike had kept fighting. Mitt had been hoping for the Veep spot that Jeb grabbed instead, and was now angling for something else, maybe a Cabinet slot. Jeb's speech was going to be targeted to the base because, of the four of us, he was the only one they actually liked. He was going to have the traditional 'attack dog' role in the campaign. John's speech was going to be a fairly standard 'Why I should be the boss' speech, only revved up for the masses, with lots of campaign promises. I planned to deliver something similar to John's but more along the lines of 'There's a reason I hired this guy', with examples of how John had done a great job as V.P. and how we needed to keep the momentum going.
Marilyn and I flew into St. Paul early Sunday morning; if I flew in on Monday it would make for an incredibly long day. The nice thing was that St. Paul is only about an hour-and-a-half up U.S. 52 from Rochester, so Suzie and John drove up and spent the day with us. I might have been talking politics with other people, but Marilyn wasn't too busy, and I still managed to have a very nice dinner with them. I could have gotten them into the Xcel Energy Center for a behind the scenes look, but they both passed on that. John had an early shift in the morning and they both headed for home after dinner.
It was more politics for me on Monday, and Marilyn was practicing for her speech. Yes, Marilyn was going to introduce me, so she had to practice first, even if it was just five minutes. After almost twenty years of my being in politics, my wife still hated to speak and campaign. She would go with me, and wave and smile, but she hated campaigning on her own. She would always ask, "What if I mess it up?"