McCain’s mating game

Speculation continues about who will join the presumptive Republican nominee on the ballot in November

For a recent First Past the Post article I wrote:

‘The American media have become engaged in intense speculation about who John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, will select as his running mate.’

Now it seems that the UK press have started playing the same tune. From the Guardian website at the weekend (apologies for the delayed posting of this – it’s not just Peter Jones who may suffer computer gremlins):

‘Feverish speculation was mounting last night over who Republican presidential nominee John McCain might choose to be his running mate in his campaign to win the White House.’

Apparently McCain hosted a barbeque weekend where a number of high profile guests were in attendance, thereby triggering further talk about who would join McCain on the ticket in November.

These included:

Mitt Romney – ex-Massachusetts governor who was soundly defeated in this year’s primaries

Mike Huckabee – the Arkansas governor who put up a surprisingly strong showing in this year’s race, largely drawing his support from the religious right

Charlie Crist – the popular Florida governor

Tim Pawlenty – like Crist, a governor of a key state. This time Minnesota

Bobby Jindal – the Louisiana governor. Seen to be an intriguing choice since he is an Indian-American

Notable by her absence was Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, whom many floated as a possible running mate earlier this year.

Who gets to join McCain on the ticket is viewed by some as being more important this year due to McCain’s age. If he wins the election, McCain, 72 in August, will be the oldest first term president in history (currently Ronald Reagan holds that honour, as he was 69 when he won his first term in office in 1980). But there are also added concerns about his health, and for this reason McCain took the unusual step of releasing over a thousand pages of his medical records to a small number of journalists recently.

But McCain is also playing a clever game by keeping stories about his potential running mate in the media since it maintains his profile without him having to spend all important campaign dollars.