Sen. John McCain’s limited release of his medical records last spring had on-again/off-again drama that’s now a hallmark of his campaign. It also left the world with insufficient data by which to judge McCain’s chances of surviving a term or two as president.

Once McCain tapped Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, the summer’s steady stream of speculation on his life expectancy began to rise rapidly, flowing from all quarters and corners of the globe — from baseball stat-heads to L.A. psychics to actuaries in Australia.

It was, coincidentally, revelations in medical records that led Sen. George McGovern to drop Sen. Thomas Eagleton as his running mate on the 1972 Democratic ticket — a move McCain has increasingly been called upon to repeat over the course of Sarah Palin’s agonizing, slow-drip roll-out as vice presidential nominee (which has already outlasted Eagleton’s 18 days). A poor showing at Thursday’s vice presidential debate could release the floodgates.

Waiting in the wings would be veepstakes runner-up Tim Pawlenty, who last weekend winged to Europe for an abruptly announced trade mission studded with high-level diplomatic sessions — a well-timed occasion for Minnesota’s governor to burnish foreign policy credentials conspicuously missing in his Alaskan counterpart.

Should McCain seek to switch sidekicks at the moment that United States is toying with global economic collapse, the already-vetted Pawlenty — who keynoted an international conference in Madrid on Monday and takes tea at 10 Downing Street today — would bring to the fading GOP ticket fresh and timely lessons from Spain and Britain on how best to slip gently into the role of a fallen world power.

Updated below.

So what happened here? John McCain’s medical records disclosure, which originally was scheduled to be a fairly major press event in which three of McCain’s doctors and a large group of reporters were to meet in person, with many other journos joining via teleconference — see this April backgrounder from Dan Nowicki of the Arizona Republic — turned out to be a quiet affair staged yesterday. Only an unspecified handful of Associated Press staffers were allowed to peruse the 1,173 pages of records, spanning the years 2000 – 2008.

The AP’s two-thumbs-up summary report is here. 

Update: CNN reports that there will be an additional press confab today, with some very odd conditions applied:

The newer batch of records has strict security guidelines attached. Only certain news networks and newspapers will be permitted to enter the room, and they will have only three hours to examine the papers.

No cell phones or Internet access will be allowed in the room, located in a resort outside Phoenix, Arizona. Copying the records is also prohibited. Anyone who leaves the room for any reason except the bathroom will not be allowed back.

No phone calls, no copying, no internet access. Bizarre.

The records being offered for inspection pertain only to McCain’s physical health. As Mark Benjamin wrote yesterday at Salon, McCain’s 1999 records release included records regarding his mental state as a former POW, which had been the subject of Bush/Rove whispering campaigns in the early stages of the 2000 race.

Previously: “McCain’s medical records release, put off twice, won’t really be a ‘release’ “

As I wrote here previously, the event that’s being planned looks to be more a dog-and-pony show than a records release. Reporters will get a chance to speak with three of McCain’s doctors, and a select group of journos will get 90 minutes to peruse the medical file, but it appears that no one will get to examine McCain’s voluminous medical file (1,500 pages the last time he gave the press a peek, in 1999) in any detail.

The whole question of McCain’s health and of the repeated delays in his records release has gotten a little attention this week (Time, US News & World Report), but it remains a faint blip on the news cycle.