The apparent divergence of opinion between Bush and McCain on Iraq may be part of a wider rift over foreign policy that's developing among Republicans as the Bush administration enters its final six months.
Hard-line neoconservatives, who lost much of their influence in the Bush White House as the Iraq war went sour in 2005 and 2006 -- and are now wielding considerable clout in the McCain campaign -- are openly accusing Bush of moving in Obama's direction on foreign policy.
“Bush and Obama do seem to be setting the foreign policy agenda, and McCain seems to be reacting to it,” Kenneth Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan, told The New York Times.
Bolten -- a recess appointee who was forced to step down as the U.S. ambassador to the UN last year after Senate Democrats blocked his confirmation -- has been a sharp critic of the administration's foreign policies ever since, particularly its talks with Iran and North Korea.
But other Republicans say that McCain is proving himself to be much more hawkish than Bush, citing his call for Russia to be expelled from the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations and his public embrace last week of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader -- which is sure to antagonize China just two weeks before the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
McCain's move could also threaten China's cooperation with the U.S. in its efforts to defuse the North Korean nuclear standoff.
For its part, the McCain campaign will have none of it. Randy Scheunemann, McCain's chief foreign-policy adviser, denied any split between McCain and the president. “Does he [McCain] feel he's had the rug pulled out from under him by Bush? Absolutely not," he told The Times. "John McCain has always said that he wanted the troops to come home. But he is opposed to an artificial date-driven timetable that ignores conditions on the ground and the advice of military commanders.”
McCain Risks Damaging Long-Cultivated 'Good Guy' Image
Nonetheless, McCain's increasingly strident attacks on Obama are coming under fire from some GOP strategists, who warned that McCain risked damaging his long-cultivated image as a "straight shooter" who repeatedly vowed would not stoop to the kind of negative campaigning that has marked past contests for the White House.
"I think John is treading on some very thin ground here when he impugns motives and when we start to get into 'You're less patriotic than me. I'm more patriotic,' " Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "I admire and respect John McCain very much. . . . John's better than that."
Hagel -- who's the subject of much speculation that he might become Obama's vice-presidential running mate -- was among several members of Congress, including Obama, who went to Afghanistan and Iraq last week on a fact-finding mission. From there, Obama visited the Middle East and Europe in a tour that was paid for by his presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, as McCain steps up his attacks on Obama, the Illinois senator, fresh from his highly-publicized trip overseas, turned his attention Monday to a self-acknowledged McCain weakness -- the economy. Obama attacked what he called "irresponsible decisions" by the Bush administration and Wall Street as the chief causes of the country's economic woes. (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Obama made his comments ahead of a closed-door meeting in Washington with more than a dozen economic advisers, just as the White House budget office warned that the next president will inherit a record budget deficit of $482 billion -- a far cry from the record $100 billion surplus that Bush inherited from President Bill Clinton in 2001.
"It was not an accident or a normal part of the business cycle that led us to this situation," Obama told reporters. "There were some irresponsible decisions that were made on Wall Street and in Washington."
