In an otherwise extraordinary campaign, both Barack Obama and John McCain appear to be falling into a fairly ordinary timetable for announcing their vice presidential picks. Since 1980, all but three running mate choices have been announced within one week of the party's convention.
Of the three exceptions, two came at the convention itself. That common timing is no coincidence, according to some who have been through the process.
"This is the biggest decision any of them make," said former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, who helped Al Gore with his running mate selection in 2000. "It says more about them than anything -- how they think, how they envision their governing. And so this is probably the most important thing they do ... until they show themselves in debates."
To understand the timing, one must first look at the traditional process for vetting and selecting the No. 2 pick. A team of top advisers will generally draw up long lists of names in consultation with interest groups and allies, and immediately begin winnowing it down to a manageable number. Entreaties may be made to some prospects in order to gauge interest, and then a working list will be farmed out to teams of lawyers and accountants, who make it their mission to know as much about a candidate's background as they do their own.
After this initial round of vetting, more names might be weeded out, while others are invited to meet with members of the search committee for a follow-up interview. Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, who was on John Kerry's short list in 2004, described his meeting as a seven-hour interrogation, with everything on the table.
"They'll walk you in and they'll say: 'OK, we've got a question about your tax return,' or 'we have a question about this stock that you owned, that you sold,' or 'we have a question about this speech that you gave' or 'this vote that you took' or 'this veto that you made,'" he said. "The spouses are an issue. That was probably the one thing that surprised me the most, is how much what your spouse has done, said, written makes a difference."
The search committee then further narrows its recommendations before turning much of the process over to the prospective nominee. Personal meetings will likely occur -- mostly in secret, but some in public, as Walter Mondale chose to do in his 1984 campaign.
During the entire process, a campaign operation is planning the vice presidential rollout, even as it remains clueless as to the name. But once the candidate has made his choice, they will move quickly to introduce the pick.
"Your timing is so important," said Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign. "You need to have a maximum impact around your convention, when all eyes are on your party."
Indeed, Dole announced the selection of former congressman and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp on the Saturday before his convention in San Diego. The rollout was timed to give the party a boost at a time when incumbent President Bill Clinton appeared to be holding a steady lead.
"Kemp complemented Dole, in that he helped promote his pro-growth economic ideas of cutting taxes, and he also helped energize the party," Reed said.
After the announcement in Dole's hometown, the newly minted running mates traveled together to San Diego, arriving by boat to the arena, where they were greeted by thousands of supporters in what Reed said was one of the highlights of the event.
That kind of reaction is precisely why the campaigns have so often waited until this point. But these late picks also come with risk. Former President George H.W. Bush caught many off guard by naming then-Sen. Dan Quayle, R-Ind., on the first day of the convention. Of course, Bush ended up winning in November, while Dole, despite a positive rollout, went on to defeat.
Complicating the candidates' choices this year has been the compressed time frame not only between the two parties' conventions, but also the Summer Olympic Games. Reed said that the Dole camp intentionally waited for the excitement of the Atlanta games to die down before announcing the pick -- one reason the choice came the weekend before the convention. Obama, some say, has taken a risk by waiting this late to make his pick. Any significant developments in Beijing this week could drown out his announcement.
"You're trying to maximize it," Daley said. "Anything that gets in the way, that has the potential to diminish that, you'd rather not have."
On the other hand, announcing before the Games may have only given time for the momentum to fizzle as weeks passed and other events intervened. In recent history, the longest gap between a selection and the convention was in 2004, when Kerry named John Edwards three weeks before they took the stage together in Boston. The star of that convention ended up being neither Kerry nor Edwards, but the party's choice this year, Obama, who delivered the keynote address.
The potential for "running out of juice" before the convention is just why Reed said he believed all along that McCain would not follow the Kerry model and announce early, even as the campaign seemed to hint at an earlier decision.
"This cycle, probably the best time to do it is on the Friday afternoon when the Democrats leave Denver," he said. "Why not start to squash their bounce and ride it through the weekend into Minneapolis?"
Reed also said that what can be important at this stage is not just the timing but the delivery. "There's a little bit of stagecraft that goes on at the end of the process, to not only make sure it has an element of surprise but to really have a wow factor," he said.
And so in the end, both campaigns may be set up fairly well as they get ready to launch. First up: Obama, who has promised to take the announcement directly to its supporters via text message, emphasizing their grass-roots approach.
Meanwhile, a nation of reporters will keep checking their cell phones.