Double Down: Game Change 2012 (55 page)

The Palin precedent hovered over Myers. The story of how McCain arrived at his selection—and in particular the hasty, half-assed pseudo-vetting she received—had attained wide infamy. And that, in turn, dramatically brightened the spotlight shining on Myers as she took up her task; she was stunned when the announcement of her appointment generated scads of headlines. The attention and scrutiny that came with it made Myers nervous, but also hypervigilant. She took extravagant precautions to minimize the likelihood of chaos, surprises, or leaks.

Myers set up her operation in a third-floor office on Commercial Street that became known as “the clean room.” There was a locking PIN pad on the door, library carrels inside, and a number of fireproof, waterproof safes in which materials on the candidates were stored. Myers kept the keys to the safes in a tea tin in her desk; anyone needing access had to go through her. The vetting team consisted of five people: a savvy political researcher, Ted Newton; his assistant, Chris Oman; and three lawyers brought on board from outside the campaign, Tim Flanigan, Chris Landau, and Mark Nielsen. Because Boston’s servers were under continual assault by Chinese hackers, the computers in the clean room were not connected to the Internet. Myers insisted that the team be extremely cautious about what they put in e-mail. Newton and Oman concluded it was best to communicate in code. Based on their junk-food-saturated vetting diet, they called their undertaking Project Goldfish (after the crackers)—ultimately giving each of the VP finalists an aquatic code name.

In keeping with the secretive nature of Project Goldfish, there would be no polling of potential running mates. (Neil Newhouse was disappointed; he had a questionnaire ready to go.) Romney conferred with grandees such as Jim Baker and Dick Cheney but refrained from showing his cards. Even among his senior advisers, there were only a handful with whom he had discreet ex-parte discussions during his early deliberations, including Stevens, Leavitt, and Zwick, the last of whom he consulted about which contenders would provide the most fund-raising pop. Beyond that, the conversation boiled down to Mitt and Beth.

Myers’s plan was to have Project Goldfish completed by Memorial Day. In April, she presented Romney with a list of two dozen names, which he whittled down to eleven: New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte, Texas senator John Cornyn, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Bill Frist, Mike Huckabee, Bob McDonnell, Tim Pawlenty, Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, and Paul Ryan. Within a month, the vetters had assembled preliminary research books on the eleven, which Romney perused and then rendered his short list: Christie, Pawlenty, Portman, Rubio, and Ryan.

In Mitt’s eyes, the candidate dubbed Fishconsin by the vetters held a special place among the final five. During the nomination fight, Romney had come to like Ryan a great deal. Their initial contact occurred in November, when Mitt sought the House budget chief’s counsel on entitlement reform. Soon Ryan was peppering Romney with e-mails offering policy and political advice. The time the two spent campaigning together in Wisconsin around the primary lit Romney up. In his daily call with Rhoades, he rabbited on about how super-duper Ryan was.
The Guv sounds like one of my buddies with a crush on a new honey,
thought Rhoades.

Romney provoked no equivalent swoon from Ryan. In 2011, Fishconsin had considered diving into the presidential pond himself, in no small part because of his skepticism about Mitt. Like Christie, Ryan was beseeched to enter the fray by members of the billionaires’ club, and especially those associated with the Koch brothers. But Paul’s wife, Janna, wasn’t keen on him running; she thought Romney was good enough. And the rigors of a presidential bid didn’t thrill Paul, either. At a meeting one day in his office on Capitol Hill with one of the Kochs’ political advisers, Ryan remarked, “Wouldn’t it be easier just to be picked as vice president? Because then it’s only, like, two months.”

Ryan’s misgivings about Romney were mainly ideological. Although Mitt was a conservative, his familiarity with and commitment to
movement
conservatism was tenuous, Ryan thought. He was faintly appalled by Romney’s attachment to Stevens, whom Ryan saw as clueless and indifferent when it came to the movement. In his e-mails and conversations with Romney, Ryan took on the role of tutor, trying to bring Mitt up to speed and help him overcome the wariness of the party’s purists and warriors. At the peak
of the Gingrich bubble, Ryan told Romney over the phone, “Mitt, there’s not a vast right-wing conspiracy, but there is a small right-wing conspiracy—and you’re not doing well with them.”

When Ryan learned he had made Romney’s short list, he was alternately excited and dubious. The positions Ryan had advanced on entitlements, tax reform, and the budget were highly detailed and exceedingly controversial. “There’s a lot of sharp knives in my drawer” was a phrase he used with friends to sum up the problem. And he saw no indication that Romney was eager to grab hold of such a serrated running mate.

Fishconsin wasn’t alone among the final five in doubting he’d wind up being picked. Pawlenty believed he wouldn’t because he was from Minnesota, which was destined to end up in the Democratic column in November. Rubio believed he wouldn’t because he barely knew Romney; they had been on the trail together only once, and who in their right mind would saddle himself with a stranger as his understudy? Christie believed he wouldn’t because it made no sense to have a ticket featuring a pair of northeastern governors; he also thought Mitt would shy away from anyone who might overshadow him—and Christie, being Christie, felt that was a certainty.

Submitting to being vetted by Myers’s team was a serious commitment. The procedure amounted to a political body-cavity search. There was an intrusive, seventy-plus-part questionnaire to answer, income taxes and health records to turn over, and more. Yet despite their assessments that they were unlikely to be chosen, Ryan, Rubio, Pawlenty, and Christie had all agreed by mid-May to open up their kimonos—leaving only the fifth man fully clothed. Unlike the others, Portman believed he might well be picked. But the prospect of being tapped filled him with no small degree of anguish.

•   •   •

P
ORTMAN’S VEEPISH VIRTUES
were easy to see. A former congressman, U.S. trade representative, and head of OMB, he had as firm a grasp of fiscal issues as anyone in Washington. He was solid, stolid, and whip smart. He had won election to the Senate in 2010 in arguably the most important battleground state on the map—snagging 57 percent of the vote and
carrying eighty-two of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties. Portman was no firecracker, but his staid dependability and managerial affect would reinforce Romney’s argument that he was capable of fixing what ailed the capital and the economy. Portman’s blandness might even be an asset, making Romney look comparatively dashing.

There were, however, two things about which Boston and the rest of the political world were not aware regarding Portman: that his son Will, a junior at Yale, was gay; and that Portman was planning at some point soon to publicly abandon his opposition to same-sex marriage.

When Romney called with the short-list news, Portman put him off, saying that he wanted to consult his family—his wife, his two other children, and Will. Although Will was out of the closet at Yale, he wasn’t ready to be out on the national stage, and Portman wasn’t prepared to announce his newfound support for gay marriage. Father and son had been talking about going public together for a while, but they wanted to do it on their own timetable. If Portman were picked, that plan would be out the window.

A week later, Portman called Romney and declined to go forward, without explaining about Will. Portman hoped that would be the end of the story—but it wasn’t. Instead, speculation was rampant in the press about whether his name was on the short list. Reporters inquired constantly if he was being vetted. Portman didn’t want to lie, and hated being coy. In late May, he asked Myers if she had any objection to his putting out a statement saying that he had chosen not to be considered.

“Oh, no, don’t do that!” Myers exclaimed. That wouldn’t be smart, and it would be harmful to us. You need to talk to Stuart.

Portman was a Stevens client; more, the two were friends. Soon, Stuart was on the line explaining the source of Boston’s distress. On May 21 on Fox News, Mitch Daniels had given Romney a kick in the shins when he told an interviewer “Of course not” when asked if he was being vetted. “If I thought that call was coming,” Daniels added, “I would disconnect the phone.”

Stevens pleaded with Portman not to add injury to insult. If you put out a statement saying you turned us down, Democrats will jump all over it: Nobody wants to be with Romney! What does that tell you about the guy? Et cetera. Why don’t you just put your name in the mix and see what happens?

Portman sympathized with Boston’s plight, had no desire to do anything to hurt Romney. But he also didn’t want to continue living this lie, he told Stevens—and decided to come clean with him and Myers about Will. Both of the Romneyites assured Portman that his son’s sexual orientation was irrelevant. Doesn’t help us, doesn’t hurt us, Stevens said. Portman made clear that if he were picked, he would also announce that he was changing his position on gay marriage. That might cause the campaign heartburn, he said. No, it’s fine, Myers and Stevens replied. There’s no reason for any of this to preclude you from being on the short list.

Portman’s circumstances were mighty strange—not just living a lie but living it in no-man’s-land. What he cared about most was his family, and especially protecting Will. But between the freak show and the press corps’s obsession with the veepstakes, removing himself from the short list would raise more questions than it answered. Reporters would furiously try to figure out why he was standing down, possibly beating a path to New Haven.

Portman went back to his family and told them about his talks with Boston. I haven’t been very successful in convincing the media that I’m not on the list, he said. If I continue to stay off it, the press is gonna get to the bottom of this soon and maybe start saying, “It’s because your son is gay.”

Portman’s wife and kids were in favor of whatever he was in favor of.

If this is something you want, Dad, I’m ready to go, Will said cheerfully.

With that, the fifth man joined the short list in mid-June—even as one of the other four was behaving as if he wanted to be scratched off it. Although Christie had agreed to be considered more than a month earlier, the vetters were having a hard time extracting information from Trenton. Christie’s material was coming in late, and what came in was incomplete.

Myers’s irritation was palpable and acute. Project Goldfish had already missed its Memorial Day deadline; a new one was set for July 1. Myers planned to deliver final vetting dossiers to Romney on the same visit to New Hampshire in which they would discuss the campaign loan. As the end of the month drew near, four of the files were in fine shape: those of Rubio (Pescado), Pawlenty (Lakefish), Portman (Filet-O-Fish), and Fishconsin. But the one belonging to the candidate that the vetters dubbed Pufferfish was still an awful mess.

•   •   •

M
YERS AND ROMNEY MET
in Wolfeboro to go over the quartet of completed final dossiers and the ragged Pufferfish file. Four of the candidates were less than ideal in various dimensions. Rubio was fresh-faced but inexperienced, falling short in the ready-to-be-president department. Pawlenty packed little political punch. For all of Portman’s attractive qualities, his downsides were abundant, too. His executive-branch experience came under Bush 43, from whose legacy Mitt wanted distance, not further association; and Portman, though not nearly as rich as Romney, was a multimillionaire.

Then there was Christie. The initial research on the New Jersey governor set off warning bells for Romney. Among other items, there were stories about an investment scandal involving Christie’s brother, Todd. Russ Schriefer tried to ease Mitt’s mind regarding the assorted contretemps, saying, Oh, all that stuff was vetted in the governor’s race. Romney scoffed.
Nothing is vetted in a governor’s race!
he thought.
A presidential race is a whole different ball game!

Now, as he looked over the Christie vetting file, the conclusion was inescapable: the Pufferfish option was kaput, making Fishconsin seem like the best catch in the aquarium.

The likelihood that Romney would wind up with Ryan was met with unhappiness by Stevens. Stuart didn’t see Ryan as the only answer—or any answer at all. Stevens liked Paul personally, but he was wary about being forced to take ownership of his budget and Medicare plans; he feared that Mitt would be sliced and diced by the blades in Ryan’s drawer. Stevens had little idea what was going on with the vetting. Myers kept him out of that loop. Right around the time that Mitt was giving up on Christie, Stevens began strenuously pushing for him.

The irony here was thick, given Stevens’s strident opinions about Christie’s behavior during the Hamlet of Drumthwacket period. But Chicago’s financial superiority and the pounding that Romney was taking from its negative ads had convinced Stevens that Boston would have to rely on earned media to compete. It was here that Christie was golden. The press scorned Mittens, but loved Big Boy. His voice was like an air horn, cutting through the clutter. There was no one better at making the referendum case
against Obama, at nailing the president to the wall with ferocity and caustic humor. Christie’s temperament was ideally suited to the unfolding tenor of the race.

“We’re in a street fight, and he’s a street fighter,” Stevens told Romney. “He’s the
best
street fighter—and he’s comfortable saying things that you’re not comfortable saying.”

A few days later, Stevens happened to catch Christie on C-SPAN giving a speech in Washington at the Brookings Institution. It was bighearted brawlerism at its best: direct, no-nonsense, confident, and self-congratulatory, unflinchingly conservative but comfortably nudging up against centrism, with nods to bipartisan cooperation. At the end, Christie unfurled an anecdote about visiting his cancer-stricken mother in the hospital in her dying days. “She reached over, and she grabbed my hand, and she said, ‘Go to work, it’s where you belong,’” Christie said. “‘There’s nothing left unsaid between us.’”