After winning a majority of delegates in the Republican primaries of 2008, on August 29, leading up to the convention, McCain selected Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate for Vice President.

These feats would be accomplished 12 years later by Joe Biden, who was 78 at the time of his election, Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, who would become the first female vice president and second gentleman respectively.

McCain's oft-cited strengths[8] as a potential presidential candidate in 2008 included national name recognition, sponsorship of major lobbying and campaign finance reform initiatives and leadership in exposing the Abramoff scandal.

[9][10] He was well known for his military service (including years as a tortured POW) and competing in the 2000 presidential campaign, in which he won the New Hampshire primary before eventually losing the nomination to George W. Bush.

[17] He then announced his formal candidacy for the presidency of the United States and in turn, his intention to seek the nomination of the Republican Party for the 2008 presidential election, shortly after noon in Prescott Park on the waterfront of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

[20] He then visited Saint Anselm College and several other spots around Manchester, New Hampshire, on a cold rainy day,[20] before starting a planned three-day campaign rally in South Carolina, Iowa, Nevada, and Arizona.

[23][24][25] Other top staffers included McCain's former chief of staff Mark Salter and long-time political strategist Charlie Black who worked for Reagan, both Bushes and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.

[31][32] By a few weeks prior to making his announcement on Letterman, McCain was already beginning to trail behind former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani in the polls, a situation attributed to his steadfast support for the Iraq War troop surge of 2007.

[33] In March 2007, with considerable press attention and in hopes of reigniting his efforts, McCain brought back the "Straight Talk Express" campaign bus that he had used to much positive effect in his outsider run in 2000.

[34] Like many candidates, McCain took to the internet in order to help boost his campaign; appealing to younger audiences by creating Facebook and MySpace pages, along with an account on YouTube.

Entitled "Living Off the Land: A Plan for Financial Viability", it called for expenses to be greatly cut and for McCain to take advantage of free media such as debates and sponsored events.

[57] McCain would focus on the early caucus and primary states, instead of trying to run a nationally-scoped effort, would try to "win debates and outperform other candidates," and thereby regain momentum and recapture the faith of potential donors.

[61] Giuliani's campaign was suffering from conflicts regarding strategy, damaging revelations about his personal life and the federal indictment of longtime ally and friend Bernard Kerik.

[76] Some political analysts cautioned that even if the McCain campaign staged some surprise early showings or victories, it was still short on the money and ground organization necessary to exploit a breakthrough.

[80] McCain, a longtime member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called attention to his foreign policy experience, as well as his personal interaction with Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.

[106] As the Michigan race entered its final days, McCain gained some notoriety by sending out mailers there and in South Carolina attacking Romney's tax record and touting his own.

[125] McCain, Giuliani and Romney were closely matched in pre-election polls, and the contest was seen as important to each campaign, as it was the last primary before Super Tuesday, when 41% of the total delegates were up for grabs.

[178][179] Commenting on the Chin paper, Temple University law and citizenship expert Peter Spiro said, "No court will get close to it, and everyone else is on board, so there's a constitutional consensus, the merits of arguments such as this one aside.

[212] Obama first agreed in principle to the notion,[213] but later rejected McCain's proposal, offering instead one town-hall event on the Independence Day holiday and four traditional debate-style joint appearances.

[219] A McCain campaign ad crafted by Fred Davis[221] compared Barack Obama to known celebrities such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, and questioned his readiness to lead while criticizing his energy policy.

[222] The ad received criticism from The New York Times and MSBC for claims that it featured racial undertones reminiscent of the attacks against Harold Ford during the 2006 Tennessee Senate Election.

[232] McCain wanted someone who would shake up the race and reinforce his image as a maverick, so he decided against more conventional choices on his short list including Romney and Governor Tim Pawlenty.

[260] The appearance on the cover of Time was particularly notable as Jay Carney, the newsmagazine's Washington bureau chief, has been vocally critical on what he has said is a lack of media access to Palin,[261] concerns which were dismissed by the McCain campaign.

[279] The fallout from the interview prompted a decline in her poll numbers, concern among Republicans that she was becoming a political liability, and calls from some conservative commentators for Palin to resign from the presidential ticket.

[296] The Republican National Committee's monthly financial disclosure report for September 2008 showed that US$150,000 had been spent on Palin's wardrobe, hair and makeup as well as clothing and accessories for her family.

[362] A month later, McCain demurred from putting too much stress on the effect the economic crisis had had on his chance to win the presidency: "That would sound like I am detracting from President-elect Obama's campaign.

[364] But they generally defended the decision to pick Palin, because the other "game changing" choice of Joe Lieberman would have been politically unacceptable to conservative Republicans at the convention[364] and because there were not many good alternatives available.

"[369] Several months before his death in August 2018, McCain published his memoir The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights and Other Appreciations in which he remarked that he regretted choosing Palin as his running mate and wished that he instead picked Joe Lieberman.

In addition, McCain returned to his long-standing practice of granting almost unlimited media access to him on this bus;[382] this as well as the notion that he engages in "straight talk" free of political calculation[381] gave him a positive personal sentiment in the press.

[417] He formally rejected the endorsement on May 22, 2008, following news reports of a sermon Hagee gave in the 1990s alleging that Adolf Hitler driving the Jewish people from Europe was "God's will" as it was part of a divine plan to gather Jews in the Holy Land.