ABC News: McCain wanted Lieberman - went with Palin because she would "shake up the system"

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/08/how-palin-came.html

ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg reports: It wasn't until Sunday night that John McCain, after meeting with his four top advisers, finally decided he could not tap independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to be his running mate. One adviser, tasked with taking the temperature of the conservative base, had strongly made the case to McCain that it would be a disaster for the party and that the base would revolt. McCain concluded he could not go that route.

The next day, McCain studied the three men at the top of his shortlist: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. All had different strengths and negatives, but McCain was not satisfied. None of them had what McCain believed he needed to do -- and would have done -- with Lieberman.

...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's name was in the mix as an unconventional choice for months, but she had not been considered a front-runner. So, over the next few days, with McCain continuing to believe he needed someone who had more of a maverick streak than his other choices, lawyers reviewed her vetting information. They kept their activities from even some in McCain's most senior inner circle.

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.

John McCain's Gambling Problem -- and Ours?

Posted July 7, 2008

The surprising Time magazine piece this week about the gambling habits of John McCain (craps) and Barack Obama (poker) continues to reverberate, with McCain's much more avid and cash-expending pursuit drawing most of the attention.

A diarist at DailyKos is even probing whether McCain has ever filed the proper federal tax forms for gambling profits and losses. And Noam Schieber comments today at the New Republic's The Stump blog on McCain's visits to the crap tables in Vegas: "A few thousand dollars at a time? Wow. That's more than borderline unseemly, I'd say -- easily several hundred thousand dollars over a period of 5-10 years if McCain plays regularly. It's certainly a far cry from the $1-ante games Obama played in Springfield."

The Michael Scherer and Michael Weisskopf article at Time contrasted McCain's high-stakes and risk-taking gambling with Obama's cautious, cerebral brand, practically inviting readers to consider how this might play out when one of them is in the Oval Office. "He clearly knows that this is on the borderline of what is acceptable for him to be doing," says a Republican who has watched McCain play. "And he just sort of revels in it."

You may have read the Time piece already so here is an excerpt from an earlier Connie Bruck piece in The New Yorker, May 30, 2005:

The moment the car stopped at McCain's hotel in downtown New Orleans, he set out at his usual fast clip for Harrah's, across the street. McCain is an avid gambler. Wes Gullett, a close friend who worked for McCain for years, told me that they used to play craps in Las Vegas in fourteen-hour stints, standing at the tables from 10 a.m. to midnight. "Craps is addictive," McCain remarked, and he headed for the fifteen-dollar-minimum-bet tables. At the most obvious level, the game is incredibly simple -- players rotate turns throwing the dice, and you either win or lose depending on what number comes up. But McCain's betting formula makes it much more complicated. "Uh-oh!" he cried, as a player accidentally threw the dice off the table. "This is a very, very superstitious game," he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/john-mccains-gambling-pro_b_111203.html