In his speech tonight in Louisiana - the kick-off, of sorts, of the general election campaign - McCain took overt steps to distance himself from President Bush. In the process, he revealed, however vaguely, that the attacks he’s been receiving at the hands of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are proving politically irritating.
“You will hear from my opponent’s campaign in every speech, every interview, every press release that I’m running for President Bush’s third term,” McCain said.
From there, the presumptive Republican nominee pivoted to a list of issues on which he has shown resistance to the Bush White House. The problem, however, may be that the record isn’t entirely clear that there is distance between the old and the new GOP standard-bearers.
[There] is ample evidence that the Senator was a great cheerleader for both the president and his policy. “No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have,” McCain himself declared in April 2008... “I think the situation on the ground is going to improve. I do think that progress is being made in a lot of Iraq,” he [had said] in December 2005.
But the Senator did hit on some policy points that could prove poignant attacks against Obama. “No problem is more urgent today than America’s dependence on foreign oil,” the Senator declared. “Senator Obama voted for the same policies that created the problem. In fact, he voted for the energy bill promoted by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, which gave even more breaks to the oil industry. I opposed it because I know we won’t achieve energy independence by repeating the mistakes of the last half century. That’s not change we can believe in.”
... contd.
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