Republican Convention: How Bush Decided

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"My wife and I were going back and forth in our minds about this," says Danforth. "We left politics six years ago and returned to St. Louis, where we wanted to stay. There were very strong pulls not to go through with it." In early June, the former Senator and Episcopal minister called Cheney and withdrew his name. Bush called the next day, but Danforth stood his ground. With Danforth out, the list of contenders grew. Cheney paid a visit to the Capitol Hill office of Tennessee Senator Bill Frist. Vetters were dispatched to the New York law firm of Dewey Ballantine to review Pataki's old records and set up meetings between him and the Texas Governor.

Bush was so secretive about the process that he kept even his closest aides in the dark. He would poll them at senior staff meetings--"Give me your top three picks!" he would demand--but he would never play the game. He flirted publicly with "bold" contenders like Tom Ridge, Pennsylvania's pro-choice Governor, but never let on that Ridge had quietly taken himself out of the running in early July, citing family considerations. And he kept coming back to the safest option--a seasoned Washington insider who would please the party faithful and whose fealty to the Bush family had been tested. "Loyalty," a senior Bush adviser intoned two weeks ago, "is the top criterion."

Loyalty was probably on Bush's mind at his ranch on July 3, when he met with Cheney to talk about potential running mates. Over lunch with his wife Laura and two aides, Bush gestured in Cheney's direction. "This would really be the best man if he would do it. I wish he would." After lunch, Bush and Cheney were alone on the back porch, and Cheney said he had changed his mind and was willing to be considered. He credits Bush's talent for persuasion for his conversion. "He grows on you," Cheney told TIME last Friday. "He's got a very important trait for a leader, the ability to convince people to set their personal desires aside for the greater good."

But even though Cheney was in his sights, Danforth had been coaxed back into the game by two Bush intimates and former President Bush's pollster Bob Teeter. Danforth described one call as "a real Uncle Sam poster. It was an 'I need you' kind of thing." And it worked. In mid-July, Danforth told Cheney that he was willing to talk to Bush.

But by July 15, when Bush met with Cheney at the Governor's Mansion, the only obstacle that might have prevented Bush from picking the former Defense Secretary had been removed. Three days earlier, Cheney--whose medical history includes three mild heart attacks and a coronary bypass--had been given a clean bill of health by his doctors in Washington. For backup, Bush's father put Cheney's doctors in touch with Dr. Denton Cooley, a renowned heart surgeon in Houston and a family friend. Cooley told Bush that Cheney's heart could handle the job. And so, on the 15th, Bush called his top three advisers to the mansion. They chewed over the possible risks of picking Cheney, but as chief strategist Karl Rove later said, they didn't come up with much to fear.