McCain different from Bush? - In McCain's Own Words: NO!

[UpInArms]

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/31/AR2008083102142.html

Wait -- isn't McCain different from Bush? Tim Russert, the late moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," asked McCain precisely that question three years ago. "No," McCain replied firmly, "no."

He elaborated: "The fact is that I have agreed with President Bush far more than I have disagreed. And on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support of President Bush. . . . My support for President Bush has been active and very impassioned on issues that are important to the American people. And I'm particularly talking about the war on terror, the war in Iraq, national security, national defense, support of men and women in the military, fiscal discipline, a number of other issues. So I strongly disagree with any assertion that I've been more at odds with the president of the United States than I have been in agreement with him."

In politics, timing is often telling. When McCain gave this account of his political intimacy with the president in June 2005, nearly half the electorate approved of the Bush presidency, and only a quarter disapproved. Perhaps more relevant to McCain at the time, 84 percent of Republicans in a Washington Post-ABC News poll still held a favorable view of Bush. McCain was thinking hard about running for president. In the months that followed, he decided to run and decided initially at least to run as the heir to Bush, hoping to win the support of the Republican establishment still loyal to the president