without books or details

-------------------The Americana Suite, rooms 2150 to 2154 in the hotel of the same name, was less overdone than the rest of the place, but the décor still bordered on Mafia Tasteful -- the suite had, in fact, been used in the filming of The Godfather....

--------- [Convention excerpt]------------ Carter was in the bookless "library" of the suite talking with Representative Peter Rodino of New Jersey, one of the seven men he said he was considering as his candidate for vice-president.  Rodino, 67, was on the list for cosmetic purposes, to impress other Italian-Americans and to remind the country of his service as the chairman of the House Judiciary hearings during Watergate impeachment proceedings against former president Richard Nixon.  Still, the two men talked for 90 minutes, then went downstairs to a second-floor pressroom and told 200 reporters everything but the truth.

Rodino had told Carter upstairs that he was not interested in the nomination -- he knew it was not going to be offered to him.  Instead, the congressman wanted to give the speech placing Carter's name in nomination Wednesday night.  But the two politicians answered questions for 30 minutes, easily and smilingly discussing Rodino's qualifications for the office.

The press conference was one of the final acts in a Carter production that was part public relations and part common sense.  The vice-president plan had been originally designed to

give newspapers and television something to talk and write about --

the theory being that idle reporters are the devil's plaything during Convention Week.

[[I love that -- kind of like Day Care for the media]] 

But it had evolved into a serious attempt to avoid making the kind of mistake that the last Democratic nominee, George McGovern, had made in hastily selecting a running mate, Senator Thomas Eagleton, who was dropped from the ticket when it was revealed that he had been covering up a history of mental problems.

Now the Georgian was making a show of interviewing seven prospective running mates -- Senators Walter Mondale, Edmund Muskie, and John Glenn had gone to Carter's home in Plains, Georgia, and Rodino and Senators Frank Church, Henry Jackson, and Adlai Stevenson III were being interviewed in New York. 

All seven had also been asked to fill out a 17-question form (see Appendix B) that asked them things like:  "Have you ever had psychiatric treatment?" . . . "Without details, is there or has there been anything in your personal life which you feel, if known, may be of embarrassment in the presidential election this year?"-------------------------- [end ecerpt]

= = = = =
"Without details..."

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{Convention, by Richard Reeves.  Copyright, 1977.  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  New York and London.}

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