Yeah, it was out of the ordinary for him, so they were surprised. His natural tendency is to do whatever the leftists want, which would have been Lieberman, Ridge, or Romney.
Actually, I firmly believe that if John McCain had lost the nomination, he’d have been pushing Powell out of the way to get on camera and endorse Obama. It’s just the kind of ‘reach across the aisle’ guy he is. Taking a post in the Obama administration is right up his alley. I actually was mentioning this as a possibility last week and my wife told me I was crazy...lol