Running Mate Selection
See also: United States Republican vice presidential candidates, 2008 and Sarah PalinMcCain began a search for a running mate to join the Republican ticket after clinching the Republican nomination. Former candidates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were mentioned as possibilities, as were many other leaders in the Republican Party and the business world. Over Memorial Day weekend, McCain invited Romney, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to his Sedona, Arizona ranch for informal get-togethers intended to assess personal chemistry for possible running mate selection.
McCain then announced plans to reveal his running mate the day following the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, and just a few days before the start of the Republican National Convention. During the running mate deliberations, McCain had favored Joe Lieberman, who shared his romantic sense of righteousness and honor. But the opposition from social conservatives, who objected to Lieberman's pro-choice views, was too strong, and a Lieberman pick might cause a floor fight at the upcoming convention. McCain wanted someone who would shake up the race and reinforce his image as a maverick, so he decided against more conventional choices on his short list including Romney and Governor Tim Pawlenty.
According to the book Game Change, on the weekend before John McCain made his vice-presidential pick, McCain's advisor Arthur Culvahouse asked attorney Ted Frank to prepare a written vetting report on Sarah Palin:
| “ | Thrown together from scratch in less than forty hours, the document highlighted her vulnerabilities: "Democrats upset at McCain's anti-Obama 'celebrity' advertisements will mock Palin as an inexperienced beauty queen whose main national exposure was a photo-spread in Vogue in February 2008. Even in campaigning for governor, she made a number of gaffes, and the Anchorage Daily News expressed concern that she often seemed 'unprepared or over her head' in a campaign run by a friend." | ” |
On August 29, at the Nutter Center of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, McCain's running mate was revealed in a surprise pick as Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. McCain had only talked to her a few times, and the campaign's vetting operation had mostly relied on Internet searches to check her background. Palin's career in Alaska had shown maverick tendencies similar to McCain's, and McCain hoped that Palin's youth, reformist record, appeal to social conservatives, and appeal to disaffected Hillary Clinton voters would outweigh her lack of national and international visibility and experience. One of McCain's aides privately remarked via an American football metaphor during the announcement: "We just threw long."
Read more about this topic: Country First, General Election Campaign 2008
Famous quotes containing the words running, mate and/or selection:
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
““... Let the cage bird and the cage bird mate and the wild bird mate in the wild.””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)