Friends or Foes? Bush & McCain's Rocky History
Once rivals, McCain helped Bush in '04 and now Bush has endorsed McCain in '08.
March 5, 2008— -- A lot has happened since 2000, but watching George W. Bush endorse John McCain will always seems a bit like watching the Yankees cheer for the Red Sox (Giuliani did it, I guess, so what the heck?).
Much has been written about the tortured relationship between the two men, and the nasty 2000 South Carolina campaign.
But not many people remember what took place after Bush secured the nomination.
Here are some excerpts from my notes from 2000, back when I was a real reporter on the campaign trail:
April 30, 2000. McCain sits down with Al Gore. That's right, more than a month after McCain suspended his campaign he still hadn't met with Bush … but he did hold a meeting with the DEMOCRATIC nominee.
That day, I wrote: "The Bush campaign has made no comment on Gore's meeting with John McCain … Gore met with McCain before Bush did, and seemingly with much less difficulty. Remember this meeting comes on the heels of "meetings about meeting" between the Bush and McCain camps."
The day after it happened, I wrote: "Bush aides didn't have too much to say on the subject of Al Gore's weekend meeting with John McCain. But they did say enough to contradict each other. Spokesman Ari Fleischer said it was "appropriate," and the fact McCain was taping for CNN at the Naval Observatory made it "inevitable." However, one Bush senior adviser was much less charitable. He said , "It was peculiar that McCain felt necessary to go to the VP's home to shoot a CNN appearance when CNN has extensive facilities in DC." One does not have to dig too deeply to uncover serious resentment in the Bush camp for McCain and his people.
After much haggling, the Bush and McCain teams agreed to hold a joint appearance on May 9, 2000 in Pittsburgh.
But the day before, it wasn't even clear McCain would endorse Bush.
On the eve of that meeting, I wrote: "A senior Bush adviser says that they had no independent confirmation that McCain would endorse Bush on Tuesday. (It might have already happened by the time many read this note.) The adviser said that while some people in the Bush camp have believed the endorsement was a possibility, they have been operating under the assumption that McCain would not endorse on Tuesday. (Bush aides deny the obvious charge that they have known about the endorsement all along and just tried to dampen expectations to make it seem like a bigger deal.)"
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