Am I crazy for assuming that McCain will pick Joe Lieberman? I’ve always just assumed that would be his (too-clever-by-half?) strategy for being the real bi-partisan candidate.

Also, I was stunned that in yesterday’s Washington Post (don’t have link) they ran through potential veeps for the GOP and Dems and they left out Jim Webb on the Dem side. It always seemed beyond obvious that he would be the ideal running mate for Obama and a very good one for Hillary. He’s won in a Red state. Lefty bloggers love him. He bolsters national security and bipartisan weaknesses with his stint as a Reaganite. He helps with white men. He’s very popular among vets. Heck, he even wrote a book on his proud lineage as a Scots-Irish fighting man. In fact, I just assumed this was conventional wisdom. I know he wrote some nasty stuff about Bill Clinton in the 1990s, so that might work against him. But as for Obama he seems the obvious choice. And yet he wasn’t even on the Post’s list which supposedly polled “insiders.”

Update: From a reader:

Ø Am I crazy for assuming that McCain will pick Joe Lieberman?
No, you hit the nail on the head. McCain refuses to rule out Lieberman as a VP, and in the past refused to state that he would support the Republican running against Lieberman for the Senate.
The most logical theory is that as President McCain would legislate the same way he does as a Senator: start with the Democrats then win over enough liberal Republicans to avoid filibuster. Probably the main exception would be on military issues, where he would start with the Republicans for something like war funding, or mixed Democrats and Republicans for shutting down Guantanamo and on “torture”.
Judges would likely continue with the Gang of 14 approach. None of them would come anywhere near Roe. They’d be liberal Republicans or Democrats.
As you pointed out in another column, if McCain tried to placate conservatives now, it could help him in the primaries. But he is choosing not to do so. The likely explanation is that he wants to run a centrist, bipartisan government.