An Affair to Remember

John McCain is cheating on voters with George Bush, but he's not good at it, getting caught in a quickie at the Phoenix airport before going off for their fund-raising tryst at a Scottsdale hideaway.

Barack Obama, the public moralist, ratted out the couple during an appearance in Las Vegas: “John McCain is having a different kind of meeting...behind closed doors in Arizona. No cameras, no reporters. And we all know why."

History shows it's hard for candidates to run away from their past. In 2000, to take voters' minds off Monica Lewinsky, Al Gore ran a Clinton-free campaign and may have lost the election as a result.

McCain's problem is even stickier. He has to hide his love child with Bush, the war in Iraq, while persuading voters about his superior political morality and the advantage of his experience over Obama's naivete.

There has never been any love lost between McCain and Bush since their disastrous encounters in the 2000 primaries but, like many couples with a history, they find it hard to stay away from each other.

In common with employees of the Washington Madam, McCain can tell himself he's only doing it for the money, but we know how that turned out.

Bush has been a stealth president for some time, so it may be possible to keep their connection furtive for now. But the real test will come in September: Will they be seen together at the Republic convention?

In the Political Trenches

Tall, handsome Jim Himes looks a little like James Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and, at a meeting with supporters in a Westport living room, sounds like him as he talks earnestly about repairing the damage done to the world and America's place in it during the Bush years.

Behind the hoopla over Presidential primaries and caucuses, the struggle for America's political soul goes on in meeting halls and homes across the country to decide what kind of Congress will set priorities for families and communities next year with a new president in the White House.

Himes, a political newcomer, is trying to unseat Chris Shays who has been entrenched in the House seat of the 4th District in southwestern Connecticut since 1987, the only Republican in New England to survive, barely, the purge of Bush supporters in 2006.

It won't help his cause that, after weaseling about getting troops out of Iraq, Shays planted a kiss on George W. Bush's cheek as the President walked in to deliver his final State of the Union speech last month.

In his campaign, the 40-year-old Himes is being supported by the so-called 30-something Democrats in their tactful revolt against the party's ineffectual elders in the House. Two of them, one from Florida, were in the room last night to cheer him on.

After a year in the trenches, the novice challenger has outdone Shays in fund-raising and is ready to campaign against him, coupling the issue of impending recession with the trillion-plus dollars being wasted in Iraq that could have been providing jobs and repairing our infrastructure back home.

It shouldn't take a Frank Capra ending to get Himes, and others like him, to Washington this November.