News-Record.com

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr was making the rounds at form Gov. Jim Hunt's Institute for Emerging Issues shindig this morning, a case of bipartisanship in action if there ever was one. (Hunt is a Democrat, Burr is a Republican.)

Burr was an unexpectedly hot commodity because of stories like this one, which mentioned him as a potential VP candidate for Arizona Sen. John McCain.

I watched him talk to no fewer than five or six broadcast reporters who all asked him about the same thing. So I asked him for a tally: exactly how many times had he been asked today about the Veep-stakes.

"Too many," Burr said.

As he conceded in the Associated Press story, were he to be asked Burr wouldn't turn down McCain. But he neither expects to be asked nor does he think it's an issue on McCain's mind right at the moment.

"One, it's premature for the question to be asked because he (McCain) hasn't won the nomination to be asked," Burr said. "Two, any responsible candidate is going to wait to see who they run against before they go through a thought process on vice presidential candidates. Three, I don't expect to get a call."

Burr gave the keynote to forum's lunch crowd today, and he didn't escape unscathed by campaign talk. Gov. Jim Hunt told the audience that Burr had been on the stump for McCain in New Hampshire, without socks.

Burr explained to the crowd - facetiously I think - that New Hampshire electioneering laws required that voters approach someone on the stump first, not the other way around. So what better way to attract questions?

"People said, 'Are you crazy? You haven't got any socks on,'" Burr said, getting a laugh from the crowd. With the ice thusly broken, he could then go on to pitch for McCain.

By the way, Burr was at the forum to talk about energy policy. The thrust of his lunch-time speech was that the United States needs to develop its own supply of energy, both through traditional means - such as coal and nuclear - and through developing new technologies.

The upside, he said, was that North Carolina could develop new companies and jobs around these emerging industries.
"We're all for conservation, we're all for new technologies, we're just not for it right now," Burr told the crowd. "And the question is, if not now, when? The rest of the world changes at exponential rates and it requires us to stick our history behind us and to look forward and figure out where we go."

Click here to listen to his speech.