Bush's Embrace: Can McCain Bear It?

He will go to the White House today to be anointed by the man he detested four years ago to the point of considering John Kerry's offer to be his running mate and, in the following year, leaving his party to become an independent.

As the newly minted nominee, John McCain last night offered his arguments against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but at the core were reruns of his bitter battle with Bush eight years ago.

"Americans," McCain declared, "aren't interested in an election where they are just talked to and not listened to; an election that offers platitudes instead of principles and insults instead of ideas; an election that results...in four years of unkept promises and a government that is just a battleground for the next election.

"Their patience is at an end for politicians who value ambition over principle, and for partisanship that is less a contest of ideas than an uncivil brawl over the spoils of power."

That sounds more like an indictment of Bush and Rove than a description of what is involved now in opposing either Clinton or Obama.

Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will have to hammer at the contradictions that John McCain faces in running as the successor of a President whose policies and practices he abhorred, who botched a war more badly than the one McCain suffered in and who attacked his family in 2000 with personal smears against his wife and child that still rankle.

Have a nice lunch at the White House, Senator.