Frenemies: The McCain-Bush Dance

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An Uneasy Truce
In the spring of 2004, John Kerry secretly urged his fellow Vietnam vet to join him on a unity ticket. It was, to put it mildly, a full-court press: Kerry offered to make McCain both Vice President and Secretary of Defense and to give him control of foreign policy. Kerry lobbied McCain's wife Cindy and even enlisted the help of Warren Beatty, with whom McCain had become friendly. McCain turned Kerry down. Aides say he sincerely believed that Bush had been and would be a better President than Kerry.

By then it was dawning on McCain's circle of advisers that with no Vice President or other heir apparent to Bush in the mix, their man could run again in 2008 — but he'd have to improve his standing within the G.O.P. In May 2004, without telling McCain, John Weaver asked Mark McKinnon, Bush's ad man, to set up a meeting between him and Karl Rove. Onetime allies in Texas, Weaver and Rove had been feuding since 1988. "This was historic. This was like the Hatfields sitting down with the McCoys," says McKinnon. Rove agreed to the meeting but wanted McKinnon there as a witness. At a Caribou coffee shop not far from the White House, McKinnon observed as Weaver and Rove buried the hatchet. Weaver suggested McCain was willing to campaign for the President's reelection. Rove seemed surprised. "We didn't know he would help," Rove said. "Nobody asked," replied Weaver.

It wasn't long before McCain was embracing Bush — literally. A photo of him awkwardly hugging the President has become the iconic image of their rapprochement, one that Democrats are already using against him. McCain, at least, took the embrace to heart: nobody campaigned harder for Bush's reelection than he did. The very fact that he'd fought so many times with the President only enhanced the value of his endorsement. "[McCain] was our most important surrogate," says Terry Nelson, who was political director of Bush's reelection campaign and, for a time, campaign manager for McCain's 2008 bid. But the two men remained situational allies, not friends. In the minutes before Bush's final debate with Kerry, McCain was full of kinetic energy as he delivered a pep talk to the President in a holding room. "This is the most important moment of your life!" he barked at Bush. "You're gonna be great!" Later, Bush told aides that he found McCain's intensity off-putting. "McCain was wound up tight all the time on the campaign trail," says a Bush aide. "That's just not how the President is. He thought it was over the top."

Balancing Act
Compared with what went before, says Weaver, relations between McCain and Bush in Bush's second term have been something like the Era of Good Feeling. True, McCain was among the first lawmakers of any party to take on Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld directly — and did so with such force and frequency that "it began to really annoy the President," says a former top aide to Bush. And for a brief moment in the fall of 2006, it seemed that McCain's truce with Bush would fall apart over the President's support for interrogation techniques that McCain, who is something of an expert on the subject, considered torture. But through all that, says a McCain associate, "it never got to DEFCON 1." In April 2007, at an early gathering of G.O.P. candidates before the party faithful in Des Moines, Iowa, McCain ladled praise on Bush. "I support him," he gushed, "and I believe in him."

But always, there were limits. The White House quietly pushed two other Republicans for the G.O.P. nomination in 2005 — first Bill Frist and then George Allen, both of whom flamed out. Even as some of his own top campaign advisers, including McKinnon, Nelson and Steve Schmidt, went to work for McCain, Bush doubted McCain's chances of winning the G.O.P. nomination. "The President was never one to count McCain out," says a former senior Bush aide, "but he felt like [Mitt] Romney was the best positioned." Though his campaign has been coordinating with the White House through regular conference calls ever since he became the presumptive nominee, McCain has kept as much physical distance from Bush as possible. But there have been awkward moments. The President did McCain no favors, for example, when he stepped on the candidate's message last month by calling on Congress to authorize offshore oil drilling the day after McCain had done the same thing. "If that was orchestrated," says Ken Duberstein, a veteran G.O.P. power broker, "both staffs should be shot."

While the two leaders agree on Iraq and McCain now claims to share Bush's commitment to tax cuts, a McCain presidency would in other ways bear only scant resemblance to the Bush years. On the environment, spending, government reform and other issues, McCain remains at odds with Bush. And the corporate ethos of this Administration would be replaced by something dramatically, and perhaps chaotically, less programmed. And yet most voters aren't going to forget their feelings about the current President when they cast their ballots in November. After McCain secured his party's nomination in March, he visited the White House to receive a Rose Garden endorsement from the President. "Dutiful" did not begin to describe the event. But McCain needed Bush's blessing to help him shore up support among conservatives.

He still does. He also knows, though, that the President is a liability with the moderates and swing voters who decide close elections. He laughed when asked whether he wanted Bush to campaign for him, suggesting the President's "busy schedule" might prevent it. For his part, Bush said he'd help in whatever way he could but that "it's not about me." McCain can only wish that were true.

— With reporting by Will Schultz and Karen Tumulty / Washington