Chuck Hagel in The New Yorker

"...For Hagel, almost as disturbing as Palin’s lack of experience is her willingness—in disparaging remarks about Joe Biden’s long Senate career, for example—to belittle the notion that experience is important. “There’s no question, she knows her market,” Hagel said. “She knows her audience, and she’s going right after them. And I’ll tell you why that’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because you don’t want to define down the standards in any institution, ever, in life. You want to always strive to define standards up. If you start defining standards down—‘Well, I don’t have a big education, I don’t have experience’—yes, there’s a point to be made that not all the smartest people come out of Yale or Harvard. But to intentionally define down in some kind of wild populism, that those things don’t count in a complicated, dangerous world—that’s dangerous in itself.

“There was a political party in this country called the Know-Nothings,” he continued. “And we’re getting on the fringe of that, with these one-issue voters—pro-choice or pro-life. Important issue, I know that. But, my goodness. The world is blowing up everywhere, and I just don’t think that is a responsible way to see the world, on that one issue. And, interestingly enough, that is one issue that stopped John McCain from picking one of the people he really wanted, Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge”—the Independent senator from Connecticut and the Republican former governor of Pennsylvania. (Both men are pro-choice.)

Several of Hagel’s close friends told me they believed that if McCain won the election he would ask Hagel to serve in his Cabinet, as either Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State, and that Hagel would agree, despite their differences. In February, 2006, in an article in the Times Magazine, Joseph Lelyveld asked McCain whether he would consider asking Hagel to be his running mate or a member of his Administration, and he quoted McCain as saying, “I’d be honored to have Chuck with me in any capacity. He’d make a great Secretary of State.”
I asked Hagel whether he would accept a post in a McCain Administration, and he said that he had thought about it. “But I don’t see John changing his position and direction and concept of the American role in the world, to adjust to mine,” he went on. “I’m not going to change mine to adjust to his. And I serve at the pleasure of the President. So it wouldn’t work.” ♦ "Odd Man Out," by Connie Bruck

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/03/081103fa_fact_bruck?printable=true


And equally as interesting, "How John McCain came to pick Sarah Palin" By Jane Mayer:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/27/081027fa_fact_mayer