NYT: Two McCain Moments Rarely Mentioned

[beachmom]

Very interesting article about McCain's flirtations with changing parties and joining the Democratic ticket in 2004. Although many Kerry supporters are uncomfortable with this part of the 2004 history, it is what it is. I think it is true, and I think the Democratic side is more trustworthy than McCain's side:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/politics/24mccain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

But less than three years later, Mr. McCain was once again in talks with the Democrats, this time over whether he would be Mr. Kerry’s running mate. In an interview with a blog last year, Mr. Kerry said that the initial idea had come from Mr. McCain’s side, as had happened in 2001.

Mr. Kerry, reacting to reports in The Hill newspaper last year about Mr. Weaver’s 2001 approach to Mr. Downey, said he saw a pattern. “It doesn’t surprise me completely because his people similarly approached me to engage in a discussion about his potentially being on the ticket as vice president,” Mr. Kerry told Jonathan Singer of MyDD.com, a prominent liberal blog, in remarks that are available in an audio version online and that Mr. Kerry’s staff said last week were accurate. “So his people were active — let’s put it that way.”

Two former Kerry strategists said last week that Mr. Weaver went to Mr. Kerry’s house in Georgetown a short time after Mr. Kerry won the Democratic nomination in March and asked that Mr. Kerry consider Mr. McCain as his running mate. (Mr. Weaver said in his e-mail message that the idea had come from Mr. Kerry.) Whatever the case, both sides say that Mr. Kerry was so enthusiastic about the notion that he relentlessly pursued Mr. McCain, even to the point of offering him a large part of the president’s national security responsibilities.

...

Mr. Kerry declined last week to discuss his conversations with Mr. McCain, but three former Kerry strategists said that Mr. McCain had not immediately dismissed the notion of sharing the Democratic ticket. “McCain did not flat-out say no, regardless of what he’s saying now,” said one strategist who asked not to be named. “He was interested in this discussion.”

But however Mr. McCain reacted, he ultimately decided, Mr. Salter said, that the idea would never work. At one point Mr. McCain told Mr. Kerry, Mr. Salter recalled, “What if something happens to you? Your party’s going to be pretty surprised about the kind of president they’re going to have.”

Still, that did not stop a number of Kerry strategists from thinking that Mr. McCain might have helped propel the Democrats to the White House in 2004. “It was a way to extend the reach of the candidacy,” said Mike Donilon, who was one of Mr. Kerry’s media advisers and had been a college roommate of Mr. Salter’s. “I thought it could have been a very strong ticket.”

[JI7]

1. they wanted him to be a Jim Webb

before they actually asked him to be on the ticket.