Nunn: too pleased

I spent last night on a downtown DC roof deck with a group of people who can only be described as inside. Their clear consensus is that John Kerry’s running mate has all but been chosen and it will be former GA Senator Sam Nunn. This squares with what I heard Kerry tell a small group of big donors not long ago that he does not believe he can win without the South and his Veep choice will reflect this. And all this time I thought he was talking about Mary Landrieu…

Today, the NY Post (!) reports that the FBI is vetting the professional corporate board member. This is news, I think to most people. Isn’t that the job of the Kerry campaign? Do you think they’re planning to detain Nunn for a few months to soften him up?

What most interesting about this to me is not the regionalism, which Bush/Cheney, Clinton/Gore, and probably Bush/Quayle (a youth play) proved to be overrated. Rather it’s 1) the comfort of big biz with Nunn (thereby exposing that Kerry may think he needs some shoring up in this dept.) and 2) his leadership role in the area of nuke proliferation.

Nunn is Co Chairman and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a private non-profit working on non-proliferation issues at the behest of… Ted Tuner. I have no idea what that means, although it’s worth about $38 million, the amount that NTI has obligated since it was founded in 2000.

I hope this choice signals that Kerry is going to really open the national security flank on Bush. Remember that 3 months ago, BC04 couldn’t stop talking about the differences between their man and Kerry. Now they’ve quieted down on that, and even seem to be blurring the differences. With this choice, Kerry would bring them back into focus.

btw, what exactly do you have to do to get fired from your job at the pentagon?