Tuesday, May 20, 2008

George W. Bush: A Big Liability for John McCain

Bush-McCain:"McBush" "McSame" "running for a third Bush term," these labels have stuck to John McCain in the early stages of the 2008 general election campaign. George W. Bush has the highest disapproval ratings of any modern US President – even higher than that of Richard Nixon in the aftermath of Watergate.

As McCain sought to win over the Republican establishment, more and more he bought into the unpopular and failed policies of the Bush administration – for example, despite earlier opposition, McCain now wholeheartedly supports Bush's tax cut which mostly benefited the rich and drastically reduced government revenues, leading to ballooning budget deficits.

McCain also is a staunch supporter of Bush's unpopular, costly, and bloody war in Iraq, and of the "troop surge."

The "maverick" McCain of 2000, who wasn't afraid to challenge his party, is gone. Now we have a new McCain who is joined at the hip with a deeply unpopular President.

Polls have shown that McCain’s association of Bush is of greater concern than Obama's association with his controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Bush is an albatross that McCain has yet to "reject and denounce."

On the contrary, McCain has been more than happy to embrace Bush in recent days – most notably with George W. Bush's uncalled for attack on Obama while speaking before a foreign legislature. While not mentioning him by name, it was clear that Bush was referring to Obama, and his policy of seeking diplomatic solutions with friends and enemies of the United States, when he threw out the accusation of "appeaser" and raised analogies with Neville Chamberlain and Adolph Hitler.

So what did McCain "the maverick" do? He wholeheartedly agreed with the President's attacks giving both Barack Obama and Democratic Party further reasons to label McCain as "running for Bush's third term."

This has further fuelled Barack Obama's powerful message of "change." Americans are concerned about keeping their homes and their jobs in light of America's economic decline, brought on primarily by Bush's disastrous policies and the costly war in Iraq. Come election time, American will have a choice between "change" and "McSame." It's easy to guess which of these choices will be more appealing to frustrated Americans.

P.S. We should also add "McShame" to the list of McCain nicknames after revelations that, after railing against lobbyists and "special interests" in Washington, McCain's campaign is chalk full of lobbyists on staff – including lobbyists representing authoritarian regimes from Marcos' Philippines, to Mobutu's Zaire, to Saudi Arabia.

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