The Democratic Convention was held two weeks after the Republican Convention, and was held in Los Angeles. Al Gore kept his selection secret until the second night of the convention, when Joe Lieberman nominated John Kerry as Vice Presidential nominee, and put it to a voice vote. I was watching the entire event on television and was simply stunned into silence. The others in the room noticed my staring at the television, and I waved them into silence. I needed to think!
On my first trip through, Gore had selected Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as his VP pick. Lieberman was noticeable for three separate facts. He was considerably more conservative than Gore, he was the first Jewish candidate for national office, and he was quite possibly the only potential choice even less exciting than Gore. Now, everything had changed.
This was a major break with my past history! Why John Kerry and not Joe Lieberman? What had my ascension to national prominence changed? My mind was going a million miles an hour as I tried to process this. John Kerry had first made a national name for himself when in 1971, as a decorated hero of the Viet Nam War, he appeared before Congress to tell them that the war was really fucked up. He rode that into Massachusetts politics, rising through various state positions until he ran for the Senate seat being vacated by Paul Tsongas. He ultimately ran against George Bush in 2004 and lost.
He had been elected to the Senate in ’84, and then been re-elected in ’90 and ’96. This was a win-win for him. If Al won, John became VP; if Al lost, he still had his day job in the Senate. I had known John for years. He had been one of the co-sponsors that Bob Kerrey had lined up for the Gulf War Syndrome Act I had drafted back when I first got into Congress.
This was a selection aimed directly at me. Fight a hero with a hero, or some such nonsense. In Viet Nam John had earned a bunch of medals commanding Swift Boats, high speed river combat boats of the type seen in the movie Apocalypse Now. He was a certified hero. To a certain extent some of my plans, especially related to the upcoming Vice Presidential debate, were predicated on my going up against Joe Lieberman. That was all out the window now.
In the room around me there was a loud buzz as people were discussing the choice. Matt Scully asked, “Carl! What’s going on?”
I shook myself awake, and looked at the others. “Just thinking. I wasn’t figuring on Kerry. I thought for sure it would be Joe Lieberman.” Scully and a few others nodded or shrugged. “Okay, here’s our take on it. We go positive, sort of. John Kerry is a good guy, honest and honorable. How Bill Clinton got his claws into him we don’t know. Sound okay?”
“It’s as good as anything else I’ve heard,” he agreed. This was all part of our ongoing theme in the campaign, that Al Gore was Bill Clinton 2.0. Slick Willie was pulling Al’s strings and running things, whether it was true or not. This played into one of Al Gore’s biggest weaknesses, a phenomenon known as ‘Clinton Fatigue.’ Put simply, the American people were sick and tired of Bill and Hillary and all the drama they brought to everything.
Meanwhile, everybody I had ever met at any time in my life was being hunted down with a ruthlessness reminiscent of the Nazis searching for Jews. The results were mixed. More than a few people answered, ‘Carl Who?’, when asked about me. A few of my old girlfriends were tracked down and either gave glowing reviews or slapped the reporter who asked, one time on camera. I found both responses more than a little amusing. Marilyn came to light in this regard, when some reporters tracked down some of the guys from Kappa Gamma Sigma, a couple of whom commented on the ‘smoking hot’ girl I had been dating all through college! I teased Marilyn about it, and she teased the twins about it.
One interesting bunch of interviews turned out to be the people I had gotten in fights with over the years, if they could be tracked down. Of the three assholes who had tried to get my lunch money back in junior high, one couldn’t be found, one couldn’t remember the fight (he had been in a lot, I gathered) and one was in jail. That proved to be a general trend, in fact. Some of them either didn’t remember (it was over thirty years by that point) or admitted to being a jerk at the time. Some couldn’t be found. And a select few were doing time as career criminals. It didn’t seem to be hurting the campaign.
The Rottingen household was besieged to the point where John called his buddies on the Rochester police force to come out. They showed up with three cruisers and a wagon, and after issuing orders over a loudspeaker to get off the grass, half a dozen reporters and cameramen were arrested and thrown on the bus, all of them charged with trespass and two charged with assault on a police officer when they tried to resist. After that the others started behaving. John and Suzie then invited just a few inside and held an interview in their family room. When I was asked about it the next day I simply commented that there seemed to be some limits to freedom of the press after all, and that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to hassle the wife of a cop. Karl Rove was not amused.
Tusker, needless to say, ate it up. When cameras appeared in his parking lot, he took off his dress clothes and put on some old jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt and a vest, brushed out his hair some, and then went out the back and rode a Harley around to the front, like he was just coming in. He looked like an over-aged member of the Hells Angel’s with all his tattoos showing. I watched it on television later and damn near died laughing. My ever growing staff was less amused. I couldn’t wait for some biker magazine to try and get a reporter on the tour bus!
Meanwhile, I spent the entire month of August crisscrossing the country, sometimes on a bus and sometimes in the 737. I was also eating way too much food. Everywhere I went I had to dine on the local dish. Po’ boys in New Orleans, cheese steaks in Philly, knishes in New York, chili in Tucson, sour dough bread in San Francisco. In Minnesota I was served lutefisk, which is whitefish that has been soaked in caustic lye until it turns to gelatin, and after all sorts of other awful steps, is served hot. I had about two bites for the camera and smiled, and then managed to spill my plate. Even Stormy wouldn’t have eaten that stuff! When I saw Suzie next I asked her if she ate it, and she shook her head and said she had told John it would be considered grounds for divorce.
I had some fun with Suzie and her family when we hit Minnesota. I stayed the night with them, and John, Suzie, Alex, and Harry appeared with me at a campaign rally in Rochester. Their oldest boy, Jack, was in the Marine Corps like Charlie. Suzie had married a fellow with the same genetic disposition for military service that ran in our family; he had been a Marine, too. The fun came because Alex and Harry had a neighborhood business. They mowed lawns during the summer and shoveled sidewalks and driveways in the winter. Mom and Dad kept them on a short leash money-wise, which Marilyn and I had also done with our kids. Alex had just gotten his own cell phone for ‘business’, and John and Suzie had bought them matching baseball caps with ‘H&A Yard Work’ on them, mostly as a joke.
As we were leaving the house that morning, I noticed the ball caps and said, “Hey, you two want some extra business?”
“Yeah, sure, Uncle Carl!” replied Harry.
“Okay, you make a campaign contribution and I’ll get you some more business,” I told them.
“A what?”
Alex was a little more understanding of what was going on. “How much?”