Romney's Wealth Worried McCain Camp in '08

Part of the reason John McCain passed over Mitt Romney was because of his vast wealth, top McCain strategist Steve Schmidt tells the Huffington Post. "Sen. McCain got caught flat-footed answering questions about how many houses he owned," Schmidt recalls. "We knew it would be a big liability that the presidential and vice presidential candidates together owned more than a dozen homes. It was like something out of a Saturday Night Live skit. I mean, come on."

But Schmidt rejects Democratic scuttlebutt that McCain passed on Romney because of the 23 years' worth of tax returns he turned over to the campaign—returns he now refuses to release to the public. "That’s not the way the decision was made," Schmidt says. "We never sat around having a discussion about Mitt Romney's taxes." (More Mitt Romney stories.)