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2004 Kerry/McCain Ticket?

By wt

Lately there's been some buzz as to how much John McCain considered/suggested being Kerry's running mate in 2004.

A couple quick hits on Google definitely counter this buzz.

First, McCain was the Arizona co-chair of Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

Second, McCain probably could have had it if he wanted it. Media outlets before the 2004 election all presented it as a Kerry offer to McCain.

Third, it would have gotten McCain nothing. Why would he want to be Vice-President?

Would he be running, at 72 years old, for re-election to VP right now, on the Kerry ticket?

That seems like a strange way to drive your political career into the ground and ruin your legacy. Be VP until you're out of politics forever.

Or would he be abandoning the Kerry ticket right now to run as a Republican in 2008? Quite doubtful.

Or run as an independent against President Kerry? Also a bad option, given a GOP candidate and an incumbent Democratic president.

And fourth and lastly, McCain just wouldn't want the job, in my estimation. Even the people on the right who think he's a liberal acknowledge that he's pro-Iraq war, pro-life, pro-conservative judges, pro-making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Even if the Democrats would have accepted him as their VP candidate, I'm not sure McCain could have agreed with much of anything a President Kerry would have been doing the last 4 years.

So when I hear the buzz about Kerry sending out this line, I have to be a little skeptical. And I think most people should be as well.

Full post as published by Expressio Unius on February 04, 2008 (boomark / email).