Why it wasn’t Pawlenty…
ABC News has a backgrounder on how McCain came to pick Palin. It offers this nugget on Pawlenty:
Pawlenty had been the youthful pick advisers believed would represent a fresh direction -- and one they could use to argue the Republican VP pick was more experienced than the Democratic presidential nominee. But Pawlenty's flaw -- what cost him the VP -- was that he would not have stirred things up. He was safe, and McCain was not inclined to take the safe route.
The campaign secretly flew Palin into Dayton last night. She and McCain met privately for a couple of hours. McCain concluded she would "shake up the system" and was "a maverick," qualities he believed Lieberman would have brought to the ticket. But she also would appeal to conservatives -- which Lieberman most certainly would not have done.
After their meeting, McCain concluded he was comfortable with his choice. He notified Pawlenty this morning that he was going in a different direction.
Question of the Day: How much of this had to do with "Shaking up the ticket?" rather than going after the undecided or disgruntled Hillary Clinton voters and shoring up the Christian conservative base?
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