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From that meeting on, Mondale and Jordan moved together. The transition had been delayed for a couple of weeks by the power struggle between Jordan and the former transition chief, Jack Watson. A lot of people had been complaining about the holdup, and Carter was getting impatient. Men like Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh, John Gardner of Common Cause. Lawyers Clark Clifford and Ted Sorensen—all of whom Watson had visited with for many hours—had to be interviewed again by Jordan and his staff. A new list was drawn up, with a decidedly more political cast. Jordan's staff—politicians like Dick Moe and Anne Wexler and Tim Kraft—checked out the names that were offered. Jordan spent one whole afternoon talking to Du Pont Chairman Irving Shapiro, seeking Treasury candidates.
He visited Henry Owen of the Brookings Institution, Averell Harriman, Cy Vance. During one conversation with Vance, Jordan recalled his own snide public remark that if Vance ended up in the Cabinet, Carter would have failed to get new people in the top posts. Joked Jordan to Vance: "I'm going to have to block you to keep my own job." After he finished the call, he admitted that his early remark had been stupid and he was going to find the right time to apologize to Vance face-to-face.
Within a week after the Blair House meeting, Mondale and Jordan had ordered up summary books listing candidates for every department. The weekend after Thanksgiving, Jordan lugged them to Plains. There Carter and Jordan narrowed the list from several hundred names to 70. A particular Commerce candidate, Carter and Jordan agreed, was too pompous. A top Agriculture candidate dropped down on the list because he had spurned Carter during the election campaign. A woman candidate for HEW was judged to be too caustic to work with. Once again Carter phoned Mondale and reviewed the boiled-down list. At the same time he asked his Vice President to deliver his own final Cabinet lineup when he flew to Plains the next Wednesday. Mondale did.
Back in Washington, Jordan made one of his regular journeys to Mondale's Senate office. In his Navy pea jacket and worn brown boots, carrying a tattered folder crammed with names, Jordan loped down the Senate halls, looking like the country boy he tries hard to remain. "Do you hear these walls trembling?" he said, mocking himself. He walked into Mondale's office and kept up the banter. "Tell the Vice President I'm here with his instructions for the day," he joked. Mondale is just as breezy. He uses Jordan as a sounding board about his new boss, Carter. Said Mondale of Jordan: "We work well together. He's smart and loose." In Mondale's office they tested the final lists before assigning in-depth profiles on the 70.
Next morning, in the black before dawn, the two of them were off once more to Plains to see the boss. On Mondale's DC-9 they pored over the black books—Mondale puffing on a thick Cuban cigar and Jordan sitting opposite in a torn shirt, popping green Chiclets into his mouth. They were an unsolemn pair, the young man who likes his rube image and the impeccably dressed man who looked more like a smooth character actor than a politician of enormous influence.