What I can shed light on is his attitude toward governing. Let's begin with the small stuff. When his term in New Mexico began, his staff told him, "All the highway signs in the state say, 'Welcome To New Mexico From Governor Bruce King.' How do you want them to read when your name is on there?"

"Don't put my name on those signs," Johnson said. "If we change them it should be, 'Welcome to New Mexico from the citizens of New Mexico'."

The aides had another question.

"We've got 25,000 maps with Bruce King's name and message on them. What should we do with them?" they said.

"I want you to hand them out!" Johnson replied.

Asked about his leadership style, Johnson answered in a way that I couldn't help but contrast with our last Republican president, George W. Bush. He assured me that he has an excellent track record hiring good people -- but that his success hinged as much on the folks he decided to fire. "If you don't have the ability to do the firing part of it, making changes when things don't work out -- in the private sector those people walk out the door with your money everyday," he said. "On the public side, they can be ineffective and you don't have to do a thing. And there's really no consequence other than what they're doing is ineffective -- you can avoid that interpersonal moment, because it's really hard to fire people. It's really hard. But if you can't do it, you won't be successful."

Listening to some of what Johnson did as governor got my inner cynic and my inner idealist wrestling with one another. "I had an open door after four policy. I saw anybody in the state once a month starting at 4 o'clock in the afternoon," he told me. "It went to 10 pm, and I would see anybody in the state in 5 minute increments." Is it possible for a president to stay "in touch" with the American people, even if that is his sincere intention?

"What sort of people do you gravitate toward as advisers?" I asked.

"Certainly not yes people," he replied. "This is what I told everybody in my cabinet. I said, I want you to know that every single one of you can disagree with me every day of the week, and you can do it in front of the media, as long as you say, 'Here is the governor's position, and here is my position. And here is why I disagree with the governor.' The idea was that we always want to tell the truth."

"Always?"

"If I'm out running, I don't want my staff telling somebody that I'm in some sort of meeting. Tell them that I'm out running!" he said with exasperation. "You'll never go wrong by telling the truth. Never. I told my cabinet, it's going to be the truth. If any of you get yourselves in a situation, that we've made a mistake or whatever, I don't want us to ever make the statement that we can't comment because of legal restraint. We all need to comment. We all need to tell the truth all the time. And we'll let the lawyers catch up with the truth."