Just a thought mind

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Just a thought, mind you. Just a thought.

When you’re trying out to be vice-president, and you make it to the final cut, you sit down with the nominee’s people and assist in the preparation of what amounts to an opposition research dossier on yourself.

First this means tax returns and property holdings and all the relevant documents. But it also means coming clean with all the really uncomfortable details about your background, all of them. Especially the things that could sink a campaign or at least get everyone down into the campaign bomb shelter for a few days. Even innocent or benign facts that could be distorted in an ugly way need to be mentioned.

It’s a roadmap for how an opponent would attack you, so the nominee’s people want to know what he’s getting himself into.

It’s a notoriously uncomfortable process, with the discussion of the really personal stuff often undertaken with one of the nominee’s confidants. And candidates often, for obvious reasons, can’t quite bring themselves to be entirely forthcoming.

In any case, who dished on themselves for Al Gore in 2000? If I remember right, it was John Kerry, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman.

And who’s running against Gore in the primaries in 2004?

And don’t think I’m the only one who’s considered this.

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