Sanford draws blank, loses VP chance
By Lee Bandy
SouthCarolina Insider
July 17, 2008 —
Gov. Mark Sanford for vice president? Forget it. It’ll never happen. Sanford might have killed any chance he had of being picked as John McCain’s running mate when he messed up in a CNN interview at the first of the week, say political observers. Sanford has been mentioned as a leading choice to be McCain’s running mate. He had been favored by many conservatives as a viable republican vice presidential candidate. Sanford was interviewed on CNN Sunday morning. The network cited him as a candidate on McCain’s short list of vice presidential options. When the governor was asked by Wolf Blitzer, the host of “Late Edition,” how McCain can draw distinctions between himself and President Bush on the economy, Sanford lost his train of thought. He struggled for several seconds to come up with an example. “I’m drawing a blank, um, I hate it when I do that, particularly on television,” Sanford said finally. The governor then cited NAFTA, the North American Agreement, as a policy in which McCain and Bush disagree. Blitzer pointed out that both McCain and Bush have historically stood for free trade. Sanford was later asked if he was being vetted for the VP job. He said he has not been asked for his personal income tax records or other documents, standard material requested by a campaign when conducting a background check on potential vice presidential candidates.
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