Veepstakes: Rice/McCain?

This blog tends to ground its vice presidential ticket speculation in a few assumptions based on reporting. The first of them is that is the primary internal criterion is complete trust. The second criterion is that the prospect must possess widely recognized above-the-line national security credentials. Applied to Sec. Rice, her selection by John McCain is most unlikely, as there is no evidence that McCain trusts her. (There is no evidence that he mistrusts her -- but the two are said not to get along all that well.)

Aside from an unusual ability to blind themselves to Rice's evident distaste for politics, and her equally as obvious social moderateness, conservatives do not closely identify her with a set of policites, nor with a wing of their party, nor with a branch of the conservative movement, nor with a philosophy, but with a person -- the man she once errantly referred to her as her husband, George W. Bush.

Conventional wisdom, and the first drafts of history, suggest that she has been a much better Secretary of State than as a facilitator of national security policy, in part because Bush trusts her as an equal.