# Was sex anywhere near McCain's mind in selecting Palin as VP, in your view? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 4, 2010, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931 "2010-12-04T13:57:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/1 "2010-12-04T13:57:21Z")
poll to come. Also link. ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/2 "2010-12-04T14:07:53Z")
I think gender was a big factor. I think her selection was a ploy for the woman vote. The Dems had Hillary as a major player. Or are you asking if Palin _provided_ sex in exchange for the nomination? :eek: ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/3 "2010-12-04T14:08:07Z")
[link](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=587778&page=2). The distinction between choices 2 and 3, btw, amount to “it was definitely a part of his conscious thinking” and “maybe it was a tiny part of his semi-conscious thought process”–something like that. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/4 "2010-12-04T14:11:41Z")
Can’t totally rule it out but really unlikely. Choose your running mate for the chance she might give you a tumble? And manage to keep it a secret in this day of being under a microscope by the press and public? Even McCain can’t be that stupid. Or maybe he can be.😃 ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/5 "2010-12-04T14:12:05Z")
> [@River\_Hippie](#): > > I think gender was a big factor. I think her selection was a ploy for the woman vote. The Dems had Hillary as a major player. > > Or are you asking if Palin _provided_ sex in exchange for the nomination? :eek: No, of course not. Just whether it was, in your view, a part of McCain’s thinking process when he chose her–and if so, how large a part. This is entirely separate from the whole "choosing a woman as VP to gain votes, create a stir, make history"thing. That’s a given. As a political manuever, clearly choosing Palin had its advantages. I’m talking about something that had ZERO political advantages but serious political downside, but McCain thought “Yeah, I could get some of that, AND I could probably get away with it, too.” ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/6 "2010-12-04T14:26:09Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > No, of course not. Just whether it was, in your view, a part of McCain’s thinking process when he chose her–and if so, how large a part. > > This is entirely separate from the whole "choosing a woman as VP to gain votes, create a stir, make history"thing. That’s a given. As a political manuever, clearly choosing Palin had its advantages. I’m talking about something that had ZERO political advantages but serious political downside, but McCain thought “Yeah, I could get some of that, AND I could probably get away with it, too.” In that case, no. I don’t think he ever expected to have sex with her. I confess I don’t know much about McCain’s history with women. Was or is he considered a womanizer? If so, maybe he did think he might have a shot. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/7 "2010-12-04T14:41:45Z")
> [@River\_Hippie](#): > > Was or is he considered a womanizer? I was going to answer “OMG, yes” to this and cite the 177,000 hits that “MCCain womanizer” gets on Google, but I googled “Obama womanizer” and found almost twice as many, so I guess that doesn’t make my point definiteively. But if you check out some of those links, you might find that the McCain womanizer links are factual and the Obama ones are fantasy–at least that’s what I found. The Obama ones are things like “his father was a womanizer and the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree” and the McCain ones are stuff like “He dumped his first wife, screwed everything in sight for a few years, and finally married a millionare heiress.” You can decide if any of the McCain links seem authoritative to you. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/8 "2010-12-04T14:59:22Z")
I think he thought having a woman as a running mate would be a positive. He didn’t consider that having a woman who happened to be a moron might not be a positive. ---
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/9 "2010-12-04T15:02:19Z")
I was under the impression that choosing Palin wasn’t McCain’s idea, that party leaders talked him into it. Is that wrong? ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/10 "2010-12-04T15:07:27Z")
Nah, I think he wanted to get his name back in the news. Remember, his announcement came the day after Obama’s football stadium acceptance speech. McCain picking Romney wouldn’t haven knocked Obama out of the news. Picking the unknown Palin did. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/11 "2010-12-04T15:47:45Z")
> [@LouisB](#): > > I think he thought having a woman as a running mate would be a positive. He didn’t consider that having a woman who happened to be a moron might not be a positive. Yeah, this is what I’m gonna go with. He MIGHT have just been enamored by her (relative) good looks when picking her from a group of women, and he didn’t take into consideration that she’s a flaming idiot with no common sense. ---
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/12 "2010-12-04T15:48:21Z")
The real question: How much was sex on Obama’s mind when he picked Lieberman? Somewhere out there, someone has surely written some Obama/Lieberman fanfic. Seriously though, I can’t imagine that McCain was thinking about sex any more than normal guys think about having sex with every single one of their opposite sex coworkers. Besides, Palin may seem attractive to normal people, but we’re talking about a guy who has the money and power to get the most desirable women (to the extent that most women are attracted to guys with lots of money and power). If McCain is a womanizer, I doubt he’d be scoping out middle aged moms when he could probably easily get a cute young intern. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/13 "2010-12-04T16:15:55Z")
McCain didn’t really want to pick her at all, but was getting pressured to choose an extreme conservative to pacify his base. His people also thought putting a woman on the ticket might attract embittered Hillary voters, but all the women in the GOP with credible qualifications were pro-choice (Rice, Snowe, Hutchinson, Whitman, Molinari), and they had to climb all the way down the ladder to Palin to find a pro-life Republican with a vagina. The choice really boiled down to an attempt to simultaneously pacify the base and scoop up Hillary fans (an obviously contradictory goal, which shows a level of stupid sexism going on with McCain’s people), with the lesser additional hope that the narrative of her as a mavericky, moose-eating outsider would be attractive to independents. I don’t think sexual attraction had anything to do with McCain’s decision. He had really wanted to choose Lieberman anyway. Having said that, I’m sure the thought crossed his mind once or twice whenever he was in a room with her. On the other hand, that _voice_ is kind of a boner-shrinker. ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/14 "2010-12-04T17:38:28Z")
Stupid question. It didn’t enter into the equation at all. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/15 "2010-12-04T17:45:26Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > …he didn’t take into consideration that she’s a flaming idiot with no common sense. Now tell us what you _really_ feel about her. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/16 "2010-12-04T17:49:08Z")
McCain spent one day with Palin before he picked her. He was probably too dazzled by her charisma to realize that she would not be able to handle herself in front of reporters. That was a reasonable, but not a very cautious assumption. I would have assumed that someone who was elected to govern a State would be able to handle your basic political questions. I picked the second option because I think sex enters the equation in almost all decisions made by men when hot women are involved. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/17 "2010-12-04T18:54:22Z")
> [@lavenderviolet](#): > > The real question: How much was sex on Obama’s mind when he picked Lieberman? > Somewhere out there, someone has surely written some Obama/Lieberman fanfic. > . The fact that you don’t know who Obama’s choice for VP was suggests that maybe you’re not so knowledgable about politics? I’m just saying… ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/18 "2010-12-04T19:06:43Z")
There were certainly plenty of guys who voted for Palin because they wanted to have sex with her, and most of them had considerably less chance of that happening than McCain did. At the most generous, I’d say that McCain picked her because he was a shrewd enough politician to know that a bunch of other guys would want to have sex with her, which doesn’t _necessarily_ imply that he wanted to, too. ---
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/19 "2010-12-04T19:45:15Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > The fact that you don’t know who Obama’s choice for VP was suggests that maybe you’re not so knowledgable about politics? I’m just saying… Haha, I know it’s actually Biden, just had a temporary brain fart. I guess I was thinking of Lieberman because I once ran across a webpage with some Al Gore fanfic that was disturbingly humorous. Also, Obama and Lieberman together owuld be, as I’m sure we all agree, incredibly sexy. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931/20 "2010-12-04T20:00:22Z")
> [@Lakai](#): > > McCain spent one day with Palin before he picked her. He was probably too dazzled by her charisma to realize that she would not be able to handle herself in front of reporters. > > That was a reasonable, but not a very cautious assumption. I would have assumed that someone who was elected to govern a State would be able to handle your basic political questions. > > I picked the second option because I think sex enters the equation in almost all decisions made by men when hot women are involved. Well, Jan Brewer was just elected governor of Arizona. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-sex-anywhere-near-mccains-mind-in-selecting-palin-as-vp-in-your-view/562931.md?page=2)