Hotline’s On Call blog notes:
John McCain approached John Kerry to be his running mate.
No.... John Kerry approached John McCain about the vice presidential nomination.
Someone's lyin....
Which account sounds more plausible?
The New York Sun has a pretty good wrap-up of the reporting on the subject, and TownHall has McCain's perspective via interviews with two of his aides who were involved at the time.
What most likely happened, I think, is that Kerry did approach McCain over a period of time, both about switching parties and about running as Kerry's Vice President. McCain says he never took the offers seriously, and my guess is that's true.
And be sure to read Matt Lewis' interview with senior McCain advisors John Weaver and Mark Salter, in which Salter flatly declares "The idea that McCain approached Kerry is a fantasy.”
No one with any common sense is going to believe Kerry over Weaver and Salter. Read the whole interview.
And Reagan Republican recounts some of the background info on the story:
A long article in the Hill last week reignited discussion about what exactly happened six years ago when rumors abounded that John McCain might leave the GOP. According to the Hill (and, BTW, it's good to see that the paper is picking up after the Politico poaching), it was not Democrats who approached McCain, but McCain's chief political strategist, John Weaver, who approached the Democrats, namely, lobbyist and former Congressman Tom Downey (D-NY).
Weaver, who changed his party affiliation to Democrat several years ago, acknowledges that McCain discussed the issue with leading Dems like Daschle, Kennedy and Edwards, but says his boss was much more inclined to becoming an independent than a Democrat.
Yet as soon as this tempest in a teapot was settled, John Kerry compounded the confusion by telling the liberal blog, MyDD, that in 2003, Weaver approached him.
Townhall's Matt Lewis sorts it all out, with quotes from Weaver and McCain's longtime chief of staff, Mark Salter:
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