DEL.ICIO.USPublished on: 07/13/08
For the past eight summers, Sam Nunn has spent a week with friends at a manor house in Scotland. The powerful men play golf at famous links, eat fine food and relax.
Only the 69-year-old Nunn doesn't relax. He wakes at 5 a.m. to hit practice balls, his preparation giving him an edge on his sleeping friends.
 BEN GRAY / bgray@ajc.com/Staff | ||
| Sam Nunn is circumspect about returning to government. 'It just depends on what he [Barack Obama] wants and whether I feel I would fit the needs that he has.' | ||
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This year, Nunn appears to be preparing for something beyond his putt. He told his annual host, venture capitalist and friend John Imlay, he might skip the August trip this year.
Nunn didn't explain, but Imlay doesn't see any mystery. The Democratic National Convention is Aug. 25-28, when presidential nominee Barack Obama will accept his party's nomination alongside a choice for vice president. Many pundits believe Nunn is on the short list.
Nunn has been here before. Since the 1980s, the former U.S. senator from Georgia and Armed Services Committee chairman has surfaced numerous times as a possible candidate for high political office, from president to vice president to secretary of defense. Each time he backed away.
This time, Nunn could step in.
"He's frustrated now like a lot of people," Imlay said. Big issues such as energy policy, the war in Iraq and health care — and Washington's inability to deal with them — are weighing on the former senator. And that has Nunn motivated, Imlay said. "He loves to solve the problem."
Gordon Giffin, former chief counsel for Nunn and now an Atlanta lawyer, had breakfast with his old boss this month. He said Nunn seemed to have studied Obama's entire platform. "He thinks he can make a contribution now."
The fact that Nunn's name has surfaced again this year as a possible running mate or Cabinet member points to his status as one of Washington's most influential politicians during a career that spanned three decades. That reputation has continued in the 11 years since he left office.
Nunn already is serving as a foreign policy and national security adviser to Obama. Obama's team said the Illinois senator "deeply respects Senator Nunn's leadership on national security."
Not surprisingly, Nunn is cagey on the subject of the vice presidency, but he doesn't rule out the possibility.
"I don't have any overriding ambition to go back into government," Nunn said in a recent interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "It just depends on what he [Obama] wants and whether I feel I would fit the needs that he has."
Nunn has shown a willingness to make a political comeback. Unhappy with partisan polarization in Washington, Nunn last year floated the idea of making an independent run for the presidency.
Later, he dropped such talk and endorsed Obama.
Arnold Punaro, who was Nunn's chief of staff on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the nation's daunting problems have made Nunn — a lifelong Democrat with gravitas and a reputation as a problem solver — a particularly attractive candidate this year.
"It's pretty clear to everyone that as a nation we have some very, very serious issues that we have to deal with, especially in the national security area. ... It's going to take a Sam Nunn-caliber individual."
F amously analytical, Nunn's career of achievements and demurrals is grounded in calculation and consideration. Before making any big decision, he studies pros and cons on a yellow legal pad, his wife, Colleen, said.
Nunn agonized for months in 1987 as powerful people urged him to run for president. He even drafted two letters for his staff, one announcing his run, the other explaining why he backed away. Deciding he didn't have a strong enough desire, he passed out the second one.
Nunn said he discouraged presidential contenders from considering him for vice president in 1984, 1988 and 1992. And three more times, he says, he begged off becoming secretary of defense.
In the 11 years since he left the Senate, Nunn has kept busy on issues of major import. He heads an international initiative to halt nuclear proliferation. And last year he made $1.2 million sitting on the boards of some of America's largest corporations, including Chevron, Coca-Cola, General Electric and Dell.
Though he works among the powerful in Washington and in America's corporate boardrooms, Nunn's role isn't flashy. As a result, even many Georgians don't know who he is. This year — before the vice presidential speculation heated up — a poll of state voters pegged Nunn's name recognition at "well below" 50 percent, said Atlanta pollster and commentator Matt Towery of InsiderAdvantage.
But Nunn has kept up his credentials in political circles, especially moderate, pro-military elements of the Democratic Party. They've rallied to Nunn for his middle-of-the-road politics, instinct to find compromise and thoughtful, even wonkish, discussion of serious issues.
Pundits say Nunn could help make up for Obama's lack of foreign policy and defense experience. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter wrote July 4 that Nunn "may be the best pick" for Obama. "He's white, Southern and comfortable."
But some cite Nunn's age and insider status as at odds with Obama's promise of change. Further, Nunn's hawkish reputation in the Senate and support for the "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays in the military could antagonize liberal Democrats.
If Nunn jumps back into national politics, it would be another twist in an extraordinary political year. Potentially, the nation's first black president could have as vice president a white man who grew up in segregated Middle Georgia — and who in the 1970s sought the endorsement of then-segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace.
In 1972, Nunn made the most daring campaign run of his life. A young, little-known state representative, he launched a bid to fill the U.S. Senate seat that opened when Richard Russell died. He faced off against then-Gov. Jimmy Carter's handpicked candidate. Nunn cobbled together a coalition of supporters, both black and white.
He won, and he never again faced a close election, cruising to victory three more times.
Nunn built on his earlier experience on Capitol Hill, where he was a staffer thanks to his powerful great-uncle, U.S. Rep. Carl Vinson. Participating in a congressional fact-finding trip to Europe, Nunn encountered two things that would change his life.
First, at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, he met his future wife, Colleen, who was working as a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency. Second, Nunn was at a U.S. base in Germany when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Nunn said the crisis motivated him to find ways to lessen the chances of nuclear conflict.
Over a 24-year career in the Senate, Nunn was one of the most powerful politicians dealing with the U.S. military: endorsing weapons systems, handling procurement of billions of dollars and planning for wars and threats to U.S. security. He dealt with an array of other issues as well, some of which remain controversial.
Nunn helped fashion the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in 1993, which prohibits openly gay people from serving in the military but stopped incoming servicemen and women from being asked if they were homosexual. Gay rights activists deplore the policy.
"It's un-American to the utmost degree," said David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign.
Nunn doesn't second-guess his stand, but he suggested that the mood of the nation has changed and that the military should reconsider the policy.
"There's a lot more tolerance now," he said. "I think that's good."
As part of the controversy, it came to light that Nunn had encouraged two gay staffers in his office to leave their jobs because CIA and Defense Department rules at the time prohibited gays from getting security clearance.
One of the men, Ralph White, recently told a gay newspaper that he was still hurt by Nunn's move. The other, Greg Baldwin, now a lawyer in Miami, told the AJC that Nunn treated him fairly and didn't have much of a choice. "I may have to hand in my gay credentials for saying this, but I would vote for him."
Nunn's political problems went beyond the gay community in the 1990s. In a move that surprised many, he opposed the first Gulf War, pushing instead for extended economic sanctions.
His political standing took a hit. In 1996, Nunn decided to not seek re-election.
He found prestigious but less public places to use his skills, landing seats on the boards of some of the nation's biggest corporations. The new work, he said, made him "infinitely better off" financially than he was in the Senate.
But those corporate connections could be fodder for critics in a political campaign. Nunn, for example, is a director of Chevron in an era of $4-a-gallon gas and global warming questions. He also serves on the compensation committees for the boards of GE and Dell, where there have been controversies tied to high CEO pay and perks. Dell was rated as one of the worst offenders of "pay-for-failure" — dishing out big money to top executives even as the company's performance soured compared with peers, according to the Corporate Library, a governance research firm.
Still, Nunn garnered a reputation among colleagues as a thoughtful, studious director.
"Ability to analyze is ability to analyze, whether it's foreign relations or the Coke board," said Jimmy Williams, who sits on Coke's board with the former senator.
His role as a director has been active, colleagues say. Nunn was expected to lend a prominent name and a bevy of government contacts when he joined the board of Internet Security Systems. But he also thought up a way to ally the Atlanta company with insurers to win new clients, former chief executive Tom Noonan recalled. "It became a huge part of our business."
Friends say Nunn's great passion isn't business, but policy. The AJC interviewed Nunn at Georgia Tech's Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, where he is an unpaid professor. He spoke in a conference room decorated with photos of his days as power broker, standing beside presidents and world leaders from the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Nunn's hair is grayer, his skin more tanned than in his days on Capitol Hill. Some things don't change, though: He still favors big eyeglasses, a remnant of his nerdy persona that survived a quarter-century in office.
"I'm boring, but never bored," Nunn joked.
With the financial backing of CNN founder Ted Turner, Nunn helped start and lead the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit that scours the world to secure and curb weapons of mass destruction. With a $9.6 million budget last year, the organization attempts to push the threat of nuclear proliferation to the forefront of the foreign policy agenda. Its work includes keeping former Soviet weapons scientists from joining rogue nations and supporting creation of a nuclear fuel bank to deter nations from building their own stockpiles.
His efforts have earned him plaudits from wealthy donors such as Warren Buffett and Turner. "As far as I'm concerned," Turner said, "he could be president of the United States."
If Obama offers Nunn a meaningful post, friends say he'll accept. Once he takes that step, the hesitation will be gone.
Unlike many people who fall behind on the golf course, Nunn keeps on playing, said Turner Enterprises President Taylor Glover, who counts himself among Nunn's closest friends. "He will fight until the last putt."
— Cox White House
correspondent Bob Deans
contributed to this article.
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