From MSNBC:
Aides to Sen. John McCain told NBC News Thursday that the candidate will appear with his vice presidential pick Friday in Dayton, Ohio.
But McCain stayed quiet about his a running mate deliberations, while one top prospect abruptly canceled numerous public appearances.
Without explanation, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty called off an Associated Press interview at the last minute, as well as other media interviews in Denver, site of the Democratic National Convention.
Nora O'Donnell just reported that Mitt Romney was asked if he had any plans to travel outside Massachusetts, and he told them no.
I have no idea if Pawlenty can spell tomato or not, but this certainly feels like a reprise of the out-of-left-field choice of Dan Quayle in 1988. McCain would be picking a complete unknown outside of Minnesota. Perhaps that's the point.
Update: It's been brought to my attention that the word Quayle flubbed was actually "potato." I was close, anyway. At least I was still in the category of "produce that doesn't end in 'e'."
Update #2: Directed to fivethirtyeight.com by several commenters, I found this:
Just repeating what I reported in the Twitter thread, but I have a trustworthy source telling me that the GOP VP nominee will be someone other than Tim Pawlenty.
That's all I can report to you because that's all that I know. My source believes he knows the identity of the actual VP nominee but will not tell me who it is. None of this is 100%. It's possible that I'm being played, and it's possible that my source is. But I don't think so, and I believe it's more likely that the McCain campaign was playing the media.
Awesome. We can still hope for Holy Joe.
Update #3: Seemed like a good idea to update the title to reflect the new uncertainty.