Shields and Brooks Mull Road Ahead for McCain-Palin Ticket

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• JIM LEHRER:

  And to Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

  First, the question is, what was the process, what do we know about the process that led John McCain to pick Sarah Palin? What do we know, anything?

• DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times:

  It was a very tight process. The McCain people were stunned that this didn't leak. This is an organization that leaks quite a lot. It didn't leak. They didn't check it out with a lot of people, and they didn't decide until yesterday.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Yesterday?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Yesterday. And it did not follow a lot of intimate contact between John McCain and the governor. He's obviously met her, had some phone calls, but they do not know each other as well as McCain knows all the other short-listers.

  So he was taking a risk. But what he saw was someone like himself. Everybody is emphasizing the differences between them.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Sure.

• DAVID BROOKS:

  But what he saw when he looked at her, according to the people I spoke to, is someone who fights the same fights I fight. The first gateway sort of fight that he thought they have in common was the bridge to nowhere. He's been talking about that for years. She's the one who killed it.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Explain what that is.

• DAVID BROOKS:

  That was a piece of pork-barrel legislation that I think Ted Stevens created.

• JIM LEHRER:

  That's right.

• DAVID BROOKS:

  He created a bill — I've forgotten how much it cost.

• MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist:

  Don Young.

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Don Young, that's right.

• MARK SHIELDS:

  The two of them together.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Congressman from Alaska. Ted Stevens is one of the senators.

• DAVID BROOKS:

  I've forgotten the exact cost, but it was over…

• JIM LEHRER:

  Several million dollars.

• MARK SHIELDS:

  $200 million.

• JIM LEHRER:

  $200 million?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  $200 million, and it was a bridge that was totally unnecessary.

• JIM LEHRER:

  Right.

• DAVID BROOKS:

  And so McCain has been railing about this as the symbol of pork-barrel spending. She actually had the bridge in her state, as she said, and did something about it. The second thing…