America/Conor O'Clery: What was John Kerry up to on Wednesday when he secluded himself in a private cubbyhole in the Capitol building, while bodyguards ushered reporters out of the hallway?
The answer came 15 minutes later when Congressman Dick Gephardt of Missouri slipped into a back lift leading to the Kerry hideaway. The two spent more than an hour together is what was clearly part of a vetting process for running mate in November.
Republican Senator John McCain has finally rebuffed Kerry's repeated pleas to join a unity ticket (he slammed the door shut by campaigning in Washington State with a delighted George Bush), leading to renewed speculation over which Democratic Kerry will now favour. Gephardt, a former leader of the House Democrats, is an obvious candidate for running mate. He is supported by organised labour, his home state is pivotal, and he is unlikely to upstage the candidate.
But Kerry is still far from a decision. Senator John Edwards of North Carolina is the favourite. Private polling shows that the boyish Edwards could swing key southern states with his populist rhetoric and likeability. Kerry however has said he wants someone who can fill in as president if something were to happen, and Edwards may lack the necessary gravitas.
The Democratic candidate has also interviewed Senator Bob Graham of Florida, another battleground state, and the name of Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack keeps coming up. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who voted for Bush's tax cuts, is a likely choice if Kerry wants to move to the centre, and close friend Senator Joseph Biden is a dark horse, but early favourite retired Gen Wesley Clark has drifted way out in the betting after his indifferent performance in the primaries.
The choice could of course be none of the above.
The final selection of a running mate is often a surprise. Few guessed that Dick Cheney, appointed by George Bush to find a running mate in 2000, would in the end pick himself.
Kerry will take a back seat to Bill Clinton next week. With the publication of his 957-page memoir on Tuesday it is going to be all Clinton all the time.
The former president has authorised CBS to release an excerpt this weekend, evidently to get the Monica issue out of the way first. In it he tells Dan Rather: "I did something for the worst possible reason. Just because I could. I think that's just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything."
The "terrible moral error" put him in the "doghouse" with his wife and threatened to alienate his daughter, Chelsea. He didn't quit the presidency as he was "determined not to compound my error to create a much greater political sin, which would be a victory for the radical right".
Clinton describes special counsel Ken Starr as a "proverbial hatchet man for very wealthy, radical-right Republicans". At the screening on Wednesday in New York of a documentary, The Hunting of the President, he accused Starr of an "abuse of power" that "crushed innocents".
There was a bigger and more excited turnout in New York on Monday night for another documentary, the preview of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. The whiff of censorship from Disney's refusal to authorise its distribution because of the anti-Bush content enhanced the social cachet of saying one has actually seen it.
The audience of celebrities included Yoko Ono, Elizabeth Jagger, Tom Brokaw, Lauren Bacall, Leslie Stahl, Ed Bradley, David Dinkins, Sandra Bernhard, Richard Dreyfuss, Richard Gere, Tim Robbins, Al Franken, Al Sharpton, Arthur Schlesinger and Richard Holbrooke. Harold Evans and Tina Brown laid on minibuses to ferry guests to the screening from a book party in their Upper East Side home.
Leonardo DiCaprio adored it so much he flew from Los Angeles to see it a second time. Mixing with the liberal elite were some conservatives like talk-show host Bill O'Reilly (he slipped out before it was over), but the overall sympathies of the audience were revealed in the reports of a standing ovation for Moore, the hissing when Condoleezza Rice appeared on screen and the cheers for an old lady in the documentary, who says: "Where are the weapons of mass destruction? We were duped."
When Moore asked rhetorically if the film would affect the election, a woman reportedly hollered back "Hell yes!" Fahrenheit 9/11 contains no nudity but has been given an R rating - adults only - by the Motion Picture Association, which Spike Lee said was an effort to keep young people from seeing it.
The documentary will be distributed to 500 cinemas and opens next Friday.
At the Fahrenheit 9/11 screening, Harvey Weinstein of Mirimax spoke nostalgically about the friendship of Ronald Reagan with Tip O'Neill (the Democratic Speaker actually mocked the Great Communicator in private). This was highlighted by several commentators during last week's tributes to the former president.
George Bush snr tearfully paid tribute to Reagan's decency, kindness and humility and underlined the affection in which he was held at home and abroad, which was seen by some as an unflattering comparison with his "bring-em-on", partisan son, George Bush jnr. The thought of Reagan passing away in the middle of an election had been a source of dread to Democrats for a decade, according to former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan in the New York Observer.
President Bush did get a boost as Republicans wrapped him in Reagan's mantle. Newt Gingrich said "Ronald Reagan has to be looking down from heaven and smiling at the way the current President, speaking generally, stands and the things he's doing".
Bush's ratings in a Pew Research Centre poll, taken before the 9/11 commission raised new questions about the reasons for invading Iraq, rose from 44 to 48 per cent. But if the President wanted to be seen as Reaganite by association, the Reagan family proved to be an obstacle. Nancy Reagan has little love for the Bush family.
She has been rebuffed by President Bush over her calls for full administration approval of stem-cell research, which she believes could help find a cure for Alzheimer's disease but which is opposed by conservative Christians.
As the grieving widow, Nancy could not speak out, but in a eulogy in the National Cathedral, the former president's son Ron Reagan criticised Bush indirectly by praising his father as someone who did not wear his religion on his sleeve to gain political advantage. Her daughter Patti Davis also had a dig. She wrote last month about the "miracle of stem-cell research . . . which the White House thinks it can block". Not surprisingly, John Kerry picked last weekend to promote - stem-cell research.
The new chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola, Downpatrick-born Neville Isdell, doesn't think much of the energy of his fellow Irishmen. In his first substantive comments since taking over the giant drinks firm on June 1st, he cited obesity as a problem for society at large, and especially in America where, he said, 40 per cent of people engage in absolutely no physical activity. He added: "In Ireland, where I come from, half the men just sit and do nothing."