Former Republican presidential nominee John McCain is still adamant that no one was more qualified than Sarah Palin to be vice president in 2008.

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked the Arizona senator to respond to HBO’s movie “Game Change,” which implies that he only selected Palin because she was a woman.

“I thought she was the best qualified person,” McCain insisted. “I thought she had the ability to excite our party, and the kind of person that I wanted to see succeed in the political arena. She was a very effective and successful governor [of Alaska]. Again, I look forward and not back.”

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“What I don’t understand, even in the tough world of politics, why there continues to be such assaults on a good and decent person, Sarah Palin, a fine family person, a person whose nomination energized our campaign,” he said. “We were in the lead and they continue to attack and disparage her character and her person.”

But it was the way he was portrayed by actor Ed Harris that seemed to most get under McCain’s skin.

“I’m portrayed as using an exceeding amount of coarse language,” the failed nominee explained. “I don’t use course language very often. I have a larger vocabulary than that.”

“I was going to say that in the movie — which I watched part of — you swear like a sailor,” Wallace noted. “But I guess that would be unfair to sailors.”

Watch this video from Fox’s Fox News Sunday, broadcast March. 11, 2012.

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