McCain vetter: Palin nailed interview

POLITICO - By ANDY BARR 4/17/09

John McCain’s lead vice presidential vetter said Friday that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin “impressed” in her interview, knocking the senator’s most important questions “out of the park.” A.B. Culvahouse, a powerful Washington lawyer and former counsel to President Reagan, told an audience of Republican lawyers that for McCain, selecting a vice president came down to three questions: Why do you want to be vice president? Are you prepared to use nuclear weapons? And the CIA has identified Osama bin Laden, but if you take the shot there will be multiple civilian casualties. Do you take the shot? “She knocked those questions out of the park,” he said at an event held at the National Press Club by the Republican National Lawyers Association. “We came away impressed.” Culvahouse said that McCain “had 26 people on the long list,” though not all of them seemed like vice presidential material. “We all know people with a long list of qualifications ... who, at least in my mind, may not be qualified to be vice president,” he explained. (continues...)