Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, July 9, 1992 presidential candidate Bill Clinton opted not to use his

vice presidential pick to balance the ticket, instead selecting another young southerner

with centrist leanings to be his running mate, Al Gore.

Al Gore had run for president before he would go on to be the nominee in 2000, of course,

whether his presence on the ballot in 1992 actually helped Clinton win is up for debate as is often the case with these things

so let's talk about it let's get into not just this pick but some of the bigger questions around what it means to pick a vice president.

I'm joined as always by Nicole Hammer of Columbia.

Hello, Mickey.

Hello, Jody.

And here for his third episode with us is John Dickerson of 60 minutes

and the new book, The hardest job in the world hello

John hello jody so your book the hardest job in the world is about the

presidency and I'm going to do something that every vice president has

probably lamented which is make it about the President so let me

ask you what can you learn how much can you learn about a President from their

vice presidential picks and in this particular case how much can we learn

about Bill Clinton from his choice of

Al Gore? Well you know there's the endless debate about balance in the ticket and whether

the balance that's in the ticket is a meaningful event electorally or whether it's when I

spent some time looking into Eisenhower's pick of Nixon to kind of mollify the conservatives who were angry because he'd

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