WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Slowly but surely, Republican presidential candidate John McCain is putting some distance between himself and unpopular President George W. Bush.
This week it was the ill-timed "Mission Accomplished" banner that the White House hung behind Bush five years ago when Bush declared major combat operations over in Iraq.
"I thought it was wrong at the time," McCain said in Cleveland on Thursday, proceeding to criticize Vice President Dick Cheney's various comments over the years that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes" with "a few dead-enders" all that was left.
Last week, McCain surprised some in the White House by declaring Bush's leadership "disgraceful" during the crisis over the 2005 Katrina hurricane that walloped New Orleans.
"Never again," McCain declared.
It is a strategy born of necessity for McCain, facing uphill odds as he tries to win a third straight White House term for his party, a feat that has happened only once in presidential politics in the past half century.
Political experts say McCain has to put some distance between himself and Bush, whose approval rating was at 27 percent in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The same poll found that 43 percent of Americans have "major concerns" that McCain will be too closely aligned with Bush's agenda.
"When you're succeeding a president whose job approval is less than the percentage of the vote you need to get elected president, some fairly simple math suggests that John McCain needs the votes of a lot of people who disapprove of George W. Bush's presidency at the moment," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres.
Or, as presidential scholar Stephen Hess put it, "John McCain looks at the pluses and minuses, as all candidates do, and he simply doesn't see any pluses in getting too close to the president of his party."
Well, what do you expect when the current Bush administration is polling a 27 percent approval rating during an election year, and Republican candidate John McCain is trying to win a third Bush term for the White House with this Bush albatross hanging around his neck. Of course the McCain campaign would attempt to distance itself away from the Bush administration, as we can see when McCain blasted President Bush for his "disgraceful" leadership during the 2005 Hurricane Katrina crisis. John McCain is trying to tell the American voters that he is a different kind of Republican than the current Republican occupant in the White House.
The irony here is that this is all a dog an pony show. From Media General News Service:
A senior adviser to John McCain says the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign is now talking with senior White House staff everyday.
President Bush and McCain, former GOP rivals, “have an excellent relationship,” Charlie Black said at a lunch hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Black said McCain is “not a protégé” of President Bush and would not be an extension of Bush’s presidency as Democrats have claimed. He cited McCain’s differences with Bush on federal spending and the initial war strategy, but was clear that Bush’s White House team is helping the presumptive Republican nominee at every turn of the campaign.
Black said the White House got a “head’s up” earlier this week before McCain called out Bush for his poor handling of hurricane Katrina in 2005.
You just have to love the McCain PR-spin here--declaring that McCain is distancing himself from President Bush even as the McCain campaign is working closely with the Bush administration every day in presenting this distancing message to the American voters. I especially love how the McCain campaign gave the Bush White House the "head's up" before McCain denounced Bush's leadership during Katrina.
Another dog and pony show, brought to you by George W. Bush and John McCain.
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