Yanking Our Chain?

"What do you want, you little jerks?"

John McCain uses the word "jerk" freely, often with people he likes, and he had a big smile on his face when he said it.

The encounter surprised us. Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times and I had rushed the forward compartment of John McCain's campaign airplane, sitting on the tarmac in Buffalo, N.Y., Monday night, trying to chase down the hot rumor of the day, that McCain was going to announce his vice-presidential pick at a townhall meeting Tuesday in Rochester, N.H.

We had gone looking for Mark Salter, McCain's longtime aide, and got the candidate himself, who pulled back the curtain on the first-class section, where he and the staff and Secret Service sit. When Elisabeth asked whether it was true, McCain just smiled mischievously, and went back to sit down, out of reach.

Salter then issued a series of elaborate "no comments" to us and the rest of the press corps, which tried 57 different ways to get him to tip his hand about what might happen.

Would McCain be accompanied Tuesday by Mitt Romney, whose New Hampshire country house is only a few miles from Rochester?

"No comment."

Had a decision been made on the vice-presidential nomination?

"I've been told harshly [by McCain] to say nothing about this in any way, and I won't."