Newark Mayor Cory Booker should offer neither an apology nor an explanation for the truth he spoke during a television interview over the weekend. Speaking with David Gregory of NBC’s Meet the Press, Mr. Booker criticized the campaign tactics of both Mitt Romney and President Obama. Now, it was hardly a surprise that the mayor found Mr. Romney’s campaign flawed. But the attack on Mr. Obama’s campaign has caused a gigantic stir. And that’s a good thing—because the mayor spoke the truth about the president’s divisive re-election rhetoric and strategy.

Mr. Booker compared the president’s bashing of big business and affluent Americans with the Romney campaign’s attacks on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the controversial Chicago cleric who was Mr. Obama’s pastor for several years. “This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides,” Mr. Booker said. “It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity, stop attacking Jeremiah Wright.”

Absolutely. Will Mr. Obama and his surrogates heed the mayor’s advice? One can only hope—but it doesn’t seem likely. Mr. Obama appears determined to win re-election by portraying business leaders and corporate America as the enemy, rather than the partner, of the middle class. The Obama campaign no doubt realizes that with the economy still stagnant, the president can hardly run on a record of job creation and prosperity.

Instead, then, the campaign will focus on the politics of envy.

Mr. Booker’s denunciation of these tactics has won him praise from national Republicans—in fact, the Romney campaign has released a web ad featuring the mayor and his words (never mind that Mr. Booker also criticized the Romney campaign’s Wright-baiting). But Mr. Booker’s comments should not be boiled down into a campaign sound bite. His analysis of the Obama campaign’s strategy speaks to a wider and corrosive assault on the creators of wealth in the United States and, indeed, around the world.

The global economic crisis has angered tens of millions, from New York to Athens. Posturing politicians have been quick to blame corporations, or banks, or CEO’s. The energy consumed by mindless finger-pointing actually has prolonged hard times for many. Rather than work together to find a solution and to create a stable environment for investment, demagogues have sought to stir envy and even hatred.

Mr. Obama’s campaign has given into this sort of rhetoric, and that is a bitter disappointment for many who supported him in 2008. Mr. Booker was right to call out his president for this damaging strategy. Let’s see if Mr. Obama is listening.

The host began to cry in the middle of his remarks, while discussing the milestone.

"This is a big moment for me, because it's really the next step for me and for the program," Mr. Gregory said. "It has not been an easy transition, but I've always felt like I'm never alone in that."

[via TV Newser]

"I think we're very close to getting the 60 votes we need to move forward," he said, "and my guess is that the public option level playing field with the state opt-out will be in the bill."

Obviously, those words mean absolutely nothing to the vast majority of Americans, who routinely tell pollsters that they're confused beyond hope by the health care debate in Congress.

But if you take apart Schumer's 35-word sentence and translate it into English one layer at a time, it's actually one of the more significant public statements on where this process may be heading.

Start with the term "public option level playing field with the state opt-out." You'll never see it on any bumper stickers, but it actually represents a painstaking and slightly ingenious compromise on the most politically sensitive issue involved in the reform push.

The basic contours of the public option debate are easy to discern: liberals generally want one, and conservatives don't. But that only gets you so far. There are numerous variations on the public option concept.

At its most basic, academic level a public option would give all Americans the option of purchasing their insurance from a government-run provider. The program, with its low overhead costs and the potentially massive number of enrollees, would be in position to severely reduce health care costs, both for its own customers (by using its size to bargain for deep discounts) and for customers of private insurers (which would be forced to innovate in order to compete with the government program).

But this pure form of a public option, which would fundamentally alter the health care landscape overnight (and run more than a few private insurers out of business), is too radical for Congress. So from the start, the bills introduced in Congress have aimed to restrict the number of people who would be allowed to participate in the public option: basically, no one who is eligible to receive insurance through his or her employee could participate under any version. Only about 15 million Americans would actually have the option.

But that alone wasn't enough to unite the Democrats behind the public option concept. Conservatives Democrats, from the beginning of the debate, wanted further restrictions on the government's involvement.

This is where Schumer and the "level playing field" portion of his "Meet the Press" comment come in. Back in early May, he responded to conservative Democrats' fears by proposing that, essentially, any public plan be subject to the same rules and conditions that private plans face-no taxpayer support, no subsidies, and no linking reimbursement rates for providers to Medicare (a favorite idea on the left, since Medicare's rate are so low).

This "level playing field" adjustment achieved some of its intended effect-but not all of it, something that was vividly illustrated when the Senate Finance Committee (chock full of conservative Democrats) took up the public option on September 29.

Five Democrats that day joined with all of the committee's Republicans to vote down a non-level-playing field public option (i.e. one in which reimbursement rates would be pegged to Medicare) proposed by West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller. Schumer's level playing field option, when it was voted on, won over two of the Democrats who' opposed Rockefeller's plan. It wasn't enough to force a public option into the Finance Committee's bill, but it showed that Schumer's plan was more palatable to conservative Democrats.

In an effort to win over the rest of his Democratic colleagues, Schumer then began promoting the "state opt-out" idea-basically, enacting a level playing field public option while giving states the right to ban it from their exchanges.

The pragmatic appeal of this was obvious: Holdout red state Democrats like Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota (where one powerful insurance company enjoys a monopoly-and won't be happy with any politician who takes it away), might be able to justify voting for a public plan if they could tell their own constituents (and, perhaps more importantly, their patrons) that they'd never have to worry about it in their backyard.

This succeeded in moving the ball down the field further: Enough conservative Democrats expressed openness to the idea (without a corresponding number of liberals revolting) for Majority Leader Harry Reid to float a trial balloon late last week about including it in the final Senate bill.

The political reality of such a move became clear instantly, as Republican Olympia Snowe-who voted for the public option-less bill that cleared the Finance Committee-said she would join a Republican filibuster even against an opt-out plan. That meant that Senate Democrats, if they went ahead with it, would need all 60 of their members to vote to kill the G.O.P. filibuster. Just one defection would stop the bill.

Which is why Schumer's prediction on Sunday that the opt-out version will make it into the bill is so significant. When you consider who the final holdout Democrats in the Senate are, it's amazing to think that all of them might actually be talked into voting against a public option filibuster-the defeat of which would basically ensure the passage of a public option.

A prime example is Ben Nelson, a conservative from Nebraska and a former insurance executive who has been among the Democrats' harshest public option critics this year. Nelson has nothing to gain personally or politically by doing anything to help the public option. Democrats could threaten and attack him all they want; their abuse only helps Nelson with his state's conservative electorate.

But on Sunday, at around the same time Schumer was on "Meet," Nelson was on CNN expressing qualified support for something very close to the opt-out-an "opt-in" plan.

The difference between the two is actually significant: The opt-out model would begin with the assumption that all 50 states are participating in the public plan; they would have to take steps to remove themselves, and it's likely that only a handful of small, Republican-friendly states would. The opt-in model, meanwhile, would start with no states participating. Some would join quickly, but many would get bogged down in long, divisive fights while trying to join. A public option created under the opt-in concept would probably end up attracting far fewer participants. 

Still, the fact that Nelson now seems to be this close-opt-out vs. opt-in-to joining his colleagues in stopping a filibuster seems to buttress Schumer's optimism. If he and just a few other holdouts can be won over, a relatively strong public option will be in the final Senate bill-and will probably end up reaching President Obama's desk.

If that happens, the old legislation-as-sausage-making metaphor will be affirmed: The process was ugly, protracted and (to just about every American) totally incoherent. But it may still produce something that isn't all that bad.

Instead of simply acknowledging what the whole world can plainly recognize for itself—that the White House wants him out of the governor’s race, immediately—Paterson spent Sunday morning pretending he had no idea what David Gregory was talking about when the “Meet” host asked (and asked and asked and asked) about Barack Obama’s recent intervention in New York politics.

The result was typical when it comes to Paterson. Sort of like his governorship itself, he managed to take a terrific opportunity—the featured-guest slot on the gold standard of Sunday morning shows—and to twist it into a painful exercise in protracted frustration and self-defeating pointlessness.

Gregory began by recalling the great promise with which Paterson’s tenure began 18 months ago and juxtaposing it with the White House’s current effort to force him out. “What happened?” he asked.

Paterson replied that he’d had “confidential conversations” with the White House that he wouldn’t discuss but that “the president has never told me not to run for governor.” Like that means anything. (And more to the point: like Gregory was just going to sit there and let that one go.)

“Let’s be very clear what happened here,” Gregory incredulously countered. “The president’s team and others speaking on their behalf said to you that you should not run. Isn’t that right?”

Paterson would only allow that “there are people who’ve told me not to run. There are lots of people who’ve told me not to run.”

“But the White House specifically said, ‘Don’t run’?”

“I don’t know that,” Paterson replied.

“You don’t know that?! You certainly know you don’t have their support.”

“I'm blind, but I'm not oblivious.  I realize that there are people who don't want me to run.  I've never gotten an explicit indication authorized from the White House that I shouldn't run.”

Gregory went on to point out that Paterson’s own wife, Michelle, even told the press last week that her husband was “stunned” by the White House’s move. So, if they weren’t trying to get you out, what was it that stunned you, Gregory asked.

“Michelle is very protective of me,” said Paterson. “I don't know that I was stunned.  I am not.”

This whole semantic exercise was painful to watch—not so much because it insulted the basic political intelligence of the host and his audience, but because Paterson could easily have turned the line of questioning to his own advantage.

In a way, it was a gift to Paterson when news of the White House’s intervention broke last week. Until then, he’d been hopelessly drifting toward the inevitable moment, probably in the middle of this winter, when he’d be forced to acknowledge reality (at least to himself) and get out of the race.

But the massive coverage of Obama’s move (it helped that he came to town the morning after the story broke)—and the response of New Yorkers, 62 percent of whom told Marist pollsters last week that the president should keep his nose out of their state’s politics—presented the governor with an unexpected opportunity to show resolve and backbone (popular attributes he’s hardly known for) with just about everyone watching.

Instead of trying (hopelessly) to make it seem like Obama doesn’t really want him out, Paterson could have used his “Meet” forum to embrace the fact that he does. While showing proper respect for a president who is, on the whole, quite popular with New Yorkers, he could have laid out a forceful, principled case for why he thinks the president and his team were wrong to throw their weight around.

I love what Barack Obama is doing for our country, Paterson might have said, but I also happen to like what I’m doing for New York. I’ve made hard choices, but I think they’re the right choices. And while I may be down now, I also know New Yorkers are going to give me a fair hearing. It’s too bad the president and those around him won’t do the same.

Or something like that. The point is that Paterson actually has latitude to engage Obama directly on this issue. The public is on his side. By calling the White House out, he’d attract a heap of attention and the story would grow even bigger. And that would be fine, because he’d be making an argument that is already resonating: this is New York’s fight, not Obama’s.

Sure, this would certify Paterson as an enemy of the White House. But what more are they going to do at this point?

Since the story broke last week, Paterson had an opportunity to lead what would be a popular fight—one that, if nothing else, would earn him new respect from New Yorkers who’ve dismissed him as a weak, incompetent accidental governor. And in the last week, he didn’t have a better platform from which to launch such a fight than he got on Sunday.

Instead, though, he played to type, killing the clock on “Meet the Press” with pointless non-denial denials, looking every bit the over-his-head fill-in that New Yorkers have taken him for.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

ALBANY—The David Paterson that showed up for a live interview on Meet the Press was defiant, clear that he was running for governor in 2010 and insistent that he is focused on the state's mid-year budget deficit.

Appearing live at the end of the nationally televised program, Paterson was first grilled by host David Gregory as to what conversations had taken place between the governor and the White House, reading a headline from last Sunday's New York Times about Obama administration officials asking Paterson not to seek election in 2010.

"I have had confidential conversations with the White House; I'm not going to reveal what those conversations were other than to say that the president has never told me not to run for governor," Paterson said. Gregory asked if the message was explicit that he did not have support from the White House, and Paterson responded "I don't know."

"The White House has a country to run, and I have a state to run," Paterson said. "I'm blind but I'm not oblivious. I realize that there are people who don't want me to run. But I have never gotten an explicit indication authorized from the White House that I shouldn't run. But what I would say is that what I think I should be doing is managing the affairs of my state, and when I run making my case to the people and letting them decide who the next governor should be."

He then repeated that he is running for governor in 2010.

But mostly it was an opportunity for the two mayors, cross-generational allies who lead vastly different cities separated by a 20-minute PATH ride, to give each other a few politically beneficial pats on the back.

Take Gregory’s first question on the economy to Bloomberg, about whether a recovery might be under way.

Bloomberg replied that he first wanted to “say something about what Cory can't say, but it happens to be true. He has one of the most difficult jobs in America.  He’s taken over a city where you've had many years of underinvestment and lack of foresight and terrible government, and he really is the future of Newark.  With him, they have a chance to rectify things.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Bloomberg made sure to sing Booker’s praises on the subjects of gun control, tort reform, reducing health care costs, and economic competition with foreign cities.

When it was his turn to speak, Booker was happy to reciprocate. Praising Bloomberg for launching Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Booker said, “This is an American issue, it's a left-right issue and another coalition that Mayor Bloomberg has pulled together across party aisles.” He also heralded a poll of gun owners as evidence of “Mayor Bloomberg—again—his extraordinary leadership.”

But he saved his best for last, volunteering near the end of the segment that “I have endorsed Mayor Bloomberg. He's a Republican. We cast our country too simplistically in left-right debates.  He's been a leader in bringing America together around gun issues that are sensible for all Americans.  He's brought people together around lowering carbon footprints in cities, the left-right coalition. This is the way we need to move forward.”

Gregory even joined in the fun at one point, reading a recent Booker “tweet” in which the Newark mayor playfully suggested that his New York counterpart mimic him and Washington mayor Adrian Fenty by shaving his head. It was all smiles.

What exactly was going on here? After all, if Meet the Press had really been interested only in a report card on stimulus activity in American cities, invitations could have been extended to mayors who might have offered more pointed comments and not turned the segment into a meeting of the Mutual Admiration Society.

But those other mayors wouldn’t have provided the same ratings punch as Bloomberg, the leader of the nation’s largest city, and Booker, the telegenic media darling who’s already starred in an Oscar-nominated film. Very understandably, star power won out.

Once they were booked together, the on-air love-fest became inevitable. Booker and Bloomberg are friends and allies, each keenly aware of the political benefits of his association with the other.

Start with the 40-year-old Booker, whose political aspirations extend far beyond the mayor’s office that he finally claimed in 2007, after a nearly decade-long pursuit. He’s been smart about positioning himself, rejecting numerous entreaties to join Jon Corzine’s (probably) doomed ticket in this year’s gubernatorial election. His big move figures to come in 2013, when the Democratic gubernatorial nomination will be wide open.

An alliance with Bloomberg gives Booker invaluable credibility with the suburban New Jersey voters who look on Newark with disapproval and condescension. Booker won many of these voters over back in 2002, when he emerged as every suburbanites’ favorite Newark politician—the young, brilliant and urbane reformer standing up for clean government against Sharpe James’ ruthless machine. As the joke went, Booker lost Newark in that election, but won the rest of New Jersey.

But preserving that image is a little tricky now that he’s actually mayor. Any bad news that comes out of Newark is now a potential threat to Booker’s Golden Boy status in the suburbs.

That’s where Bloomberg comes in. To New Jerseyans, who mostly know New York as commuters and day- (or night-) trippers, Bloomberg is immensely popular—a strong, capable master of efficiency who has tamed a massive bureaucracy. For a time in the ’90s, it was said that the most popular politician in New Jersey was Rudy Giuliani. Today, Bloomberg could probably make a run for that title.

So it’s quite helpful to Booker when Bloomberg goes on national television to remind viewers that Booker “has one of the most difficult jobs in America.” The message to suburban New Jersey might just as well be: Hey, even if he doesn’t turn it around, what can he really do? It’s Newark, for God’s sake.

It’s a nice partnership for Bloomberg, too. The chief threat to his reelection bid is the overwhelming registration advantage in the city that Democrats enjoy—and the reflexive loyalty of many of those Democrats to their party’s line, no matter how much they might like the other candidate in the race. This is a major reason why Bloomberg’s lead over his Democratic foe, the almost invisible Bill Thompson, was just 10 points in a recent poll.

The effusive support of Booker, a nationally prominent Democrat, makes it that much easier for New York Democrats to defy the party line. That Booker, like Thompson, is black doesn’t hurt, either.

So everyone won on Sunday. Meet the Press got the two most compelling mayors in the country. Cory Booker received an endorsement that resonated in living rooms in Westfield and Summit. And Michael Bloomberg showed New York Democrats another reason why it’s O.K. to vote for him. Oh, and they said some stuff about the economy, too.

Almost two weeks after the fact, it’s clearer than ever that Barack Obama and his White House team erred in holding a prime-time press conference on July 22.

The basic idea may have been sensible. Voter support for the Democratic-led health care reform effort was slipping and momentum in Congress was stalling, so it was clearly the right time to appeal to the general public. But doing so through an unfocused and unpredictable 45-minute nationally televised press conference was the wrong choice—one for which Obama continues to pay a price.

Sunday’s Meet the Press, broadcast 11 days after the press conference, illustrated the problem perfectly. With public resolve to pursue meaningful health care reform headed the wrong way, the show devoted a good chunk of its roundtable segment to a discussion of the Henry Louis Gates controversy that has swirled since Obama offered his take on the subject at the press conference.

And Meet the Press is hardly alone; the political media has been utterly transfixed by the racial themes of the Gates story. Had Obama not weighed in, the attention of the press corps—and the general public—would now be focused squarely on the health care drama, which instead has been reduced to a supporting role in most newscasts.

The press conference was conceived as the perfect tool to rekindle the sense of urgency that once accompanied health reform, but in hindsight, just about every aspect of it worked against Obama’s purposes.

For instance, the format—an opening statement followed by questions from a handful of journalists—was only too conducive to the kind of pontification that Obama often falls back on. This inhibited Obama’s ability to deliver a sharp and focused message on health care, one that would refocus the debate and rally the public to his side.

Plus, the slightly informal nature of give-and-take from reporters sapped Obama’s delivery of the forcefulness and urgency he badly needed to communicate. He often spoke the right words (particularly in his pre-scripted opening statement), but in a mechanical and lethargic tone that undercut his message. And the sheer length of the event—nearly an hour—guaranteed that many viewers would lose sight of his main themes, with so many other tangential issues being broached along the way.

And then, of course, was the unpredictability that comes with opening the floor to reporters. Obama may have wanted to talk about health care, but this didn’t mean that every reporter he called on had to have the same interest. And, sure enough, in the last question of the evening, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet asked the president to respond to the then-fresh news of Gates’ arrest in his Cambridge home.

Obama began by making a joke about how he’d be shot if he tried to force his way into the White House, then offered that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”

By the next afternoon, the remark was the top story in the country and the Gates incident, which otherwise would have slowly faded from prominence, was being dissected on every radio and cable television show in the country. Obama had devoted approximately 99 percent of his press conference to health care, but he might as well have not said a single word on the subject. His entire message was lost to the Gates controversy and, subsequently, to the silly “beer summit.”

This has real implications for Obama’s health care push. The press conference did nothing to halt the erosion of momentum in Congress for reform, let alone reverse it. Worse, it handed Obama’s opponents a weapon (his Gates comment) that they used to inflict real political damage—all while the White House’s efforts to re-focus the health care debate at a critical time were drowned out.

Obama’s overall standing with the public has dropped to the lowest point of his presidency, voter opinion of his handling of health care is in decline, and his original goal of having health care legislation clear both houses before the August recess has been obliterated. At the same time, virtually everyone is aware of Obama’s Gates comment—with a strong plurality (41 percent) expressing disapproval at how he’s handled the matter.

Instead of a press conference, Obama could have opted to address the nation from the Oval Office. This would have allowed him to deliver a clear message that, thanks to the brevity of the format (five or ten minutes), would have been more memorable to viewers. And the broadcast networks, which reluctantly handed over an hour of their prime-time schedules to televise the press conference, would still have aired it.

Why Obama didn’t go this route is anyone’s guess. It may have something to do with his particular comfort zone as a speaker. He’s at his most compelling when delivering formal addresses to large and lively crowds; he’s much weaker when it comes to reading a script in an empty television studio. Since a campaign-style address was out of the question, perhaps the thinking was that a press conference would at least showcase some of Obama’s more likable personal attributes—his calm demeanor, sense of humor, and natural intelligence.

Not all is lost for Obama, of course. Health care reform, in some form, will still probably be passed this fall, and a drop in his popularity was inevitable; it happens to every president. But if you’re going to take a hit, it should at least be for a good reason.

Well, of course he’d say that. Voters have long ranked health care as one of their top concerns, and candidates from both parties routinely make pledges of reform a centerpiece of their campaign. McConnell knows there’s a broad consensus in America that something needs to be done and he’s not about to make headlines by challenging it.

But that doesn’t mean he actually wants Congress to do anything. In fact, there’s every reason to believe that the only real goal that McConnell and most of his fellow Republicans have in the current health care debate is to kill any plan backed by Barack Obama in a way that will score them political points. Because of the public’s desire for reform, this essentially means the G.O.P. must appear constructive and cooperative while engaging in obstructionism.

Right now, the most immediate task for Republicans is forcing the White House to back off its insistence that a bill be on Obama’s desk by the time Congress takes its summer recess in three weeks. Such a retreat would be a P.R. defeat for the White House, feeding the prevailing media narrative that momentum for Obama’s initiative is grinding to a halt, and the month-long recess would give the G.O.P. invaluable time to sow more public doubts about the plan (or plans) in Congress.

So on Sunday, McConnell sought to repackage this strategy as a constructive effort at fostering sound policy. “What we hope to do,” he said, “is to have enough time here for people to truly understand what's going on.” He also made sure to stress that “what we need to come up with is a truly bipartisan proposal” and to insist that “my goal is not to stop the president; my goal is to get the right kind of health care for America.”

Needless to say, there’s no evidence that McConnell and Congressional Republicans are actually interested in working with Obama and the Democrats. To date, Republicans have offered no concrete health care plan of its own; the closest they’ve come is a four-page outline offered by the House G.O.P. that doesn’t include a price tag or an estimate of the number of people who would be affected. For his part, McConnell offered little more on Sunday than a statement that money spent by individuals on health insurance should be tax-deductible.

But McConnell has to pretend to want reform, and to want to achieve it in a “bipartisan” fashion, because this is what voters like to hear. The message can’t be that Republicans are against every plan to reform the system, including Obama’s. It has to be that they, like most Americans, understand the pressing need for reform, but that they are also gravely troubled by Obama’s prescription—and that most Americans should be, too.

Hence McConnell’s effort to tie this message into his call to delay the process: “I don't think he ought to get the particular bills that we've seen out of either the House or the Senate before August, because they're really not the right way to go. … It's perfectly clear [that] this is the same kind of rush-and-spend strategy we saw on the stimulus bill.”

A far more honest and revealing assessment of the G.O.P.’s thinking was provided last Friday by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who told a conference call of conservative activists that “if we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

Similar Republican delay tactics helped erode support for Bill Clinton’s health care reform plan 15 years ago. Clinton pursued a slightly different path than Obama (he drew up his own plan and presented it to Congress, while Obama has put his faith in the Congressional process), but the G.O.P. response is about the same: stall, stall, stall—until enough doubt, confusion and misinformation reaches the general public that it becomes politically acceptable to simply kill the plan.

Republicans in 1994 insisted they weren’t against reform, either—it was just Clinton’s plan that they were opposed to. But once they derailed his plan, they never pushed for a new one, not even when they won both chambers in the ’94 midterms. It won’t be any different if the G.O.P. gets its way this time.

One of the responsibilities that comes with picking a vice presidential candidate is never admitting that you might have made a bad call—even if it becomes painfully obvious to the rest of the world that you did.

So it was that John McCain withstood a six-minute grilling on Sunday from David Gregory on the subject of Sarah Palin, the woman who would now be a heartbeat away from the presidency had McCain prevailed last fall. McCain would have none of it.

“I love and respect her and her family,” he said. “I’m grateful she agreed to run with me. I am confident she will be a major factor on the national stage and in Alaska as well.”

He wouldn’t agree that Palin is “quitting” as governor (“I think she changed priorities”), said he doubts that she made “a, quote, promise” to Alaskans to serve out her full term, and called her a victim of “the most sustained personal attacks certainly in recent American political history.”

Also, McCain suggested that he and Palin would have won last November, absent the mid-September stock market meltdown: “We were winning and we could have won.” (Alternate explanation: McCain’s post-convention bounce, which very briefly gave him a double-digit lead over Barack Obama, explains why he was still ahead—in some polls—when the market tanked, but even without the crash, polling trends clearly favored Obama.)

That McCain would say any of this is hardly surprising: Since it became tradition for presidential nominees to anoint their own running mates, the VP choice has come to serve as a preliminary test of presidential leadership—and, long after the campaign is over, a key aspect of a presidential candidate’s legacy.

McCain might score points with his old media admirers if he were to admit that he dropped the ball with Palin—that he made an impulse decision and that he now realizes that she is woefully unfit for the presidency—but it would be at the price of his longer-term legacy. By doing so, he’d be validating a version of history that casts him as a reckless power-seeker, the once-honorable man who took leave of his senses in the 2008 campaign and endangered the country. Give him credit for being honest after the fact, the story would go, but let’s all thank God he didn’t win the election.

McCain, of course, has a different legacy in mind, one rooted in vindication. If Obama’s presidency falters the way Jimmy Carter’s once did (and McCain just loves his Obama-Carter analogies), then maybe Americans will come to regret tuning out the old warrior-patriot in 2008. Admitting now that Palin was a blunder would ruin this; it would amount to an acknowledgement that he wasn’t up to the job.

In a way, George H. W. Bush serves a role model for McCain. Bush’s 1988 choice of Dan Quayle as his running mate was met with derision and disbelief similar to that which greeted Palin’s emergence last year. Quayle’s reputation, like Palin’s, only worsened during the fall campaign, but the political climate was too favorable to Bush for any of it to matter, and he still won the election comfortably.

As president, he remained steadfastly loyal to Quayle, even when some of his tope aides, including Jim Baker and Bob Teeter, pushed to dump the VP—fresh off his image-reinforcing “potatoe” gaffe—from the 1992 G.O.P. ticket. But Bush never seriously considered it. His own sense of personal loyalty surely played a role; but he also realized that getting rid of Quayle would amount to a damaging admission that he’d been wrong to choose him in the first place—in other words, that he’d exercised irresponsible leadership.

There is no reward in American politics for copping to an unwise VP pick. George McGovern learned this in 1972, when he tapped Tom Eagleton to be his running mate. Eagleton’s extensive treatment for depression and exhaustion was quickly revealed, and McGovern—after first declaring that he backed the Missourian “1000 percent”—gave in and forced him off the ticket, turning to R. Sargent Shriver as a replacement.

McGovern surely would have lost to Richard Nixon that fall no matter what, but canning Eagleton didn’t help; it only eroded his leadership credentials. By removing Eagleton, he essentially acknowledged everything that his critics (and the media) were saying: that he’d made a hasty, ill-advised pick and flubbed his first leadership test. It’s no wonder that 25 years later, McGovern said that, if he could do it over, he would have kept Eagleton on. He still would have lost, but the damage wouldn’t have been as bad.

Of course, just like McGovern and Bush, McCain could have avoided all of his pre- and post-election VP headaches simply by making a more considered choice in the first place. It’s a good lesson for future nominees: The VP selection process tends to revolve around electoral-map calculations, but the consequences—even for a losing candidate—may be felt long after November.