I’ve often thought about the ironies in the political relationship and rivalry between John McCain and Geo. W. Bush. Bush has been the nemesis of McCain, thwarting his presidential ambitions in 2000 by virtue of a ruthless smear campaign prior to the South Carolina primary, credited to Karl Rove, which sunk McCain that year. McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh was rumored to be an “illegitimate black child,” and McCain’s wife was tagged as a drug addict. (<link>) (<link>).

Now in 2008, with the GOP’s political fortunes at a low ebb, McCain clearly is still weighed down by the specter of Bush. But how exactly? At first I thought it’s merely because of McCain’s unwavering support of the war in Iraq, which, in spite of the progress in security brought about in part by the Bush/McCain “surge”, has nonetheless shackled McCain to the president’s wilting political fortunes. Along with that, McCain has been hampered by the need to cater many of his positions (on abortion., the Supreme Court, tax cuts, interrogation and surveillance practices in the WOT, etc.) to the far Right and culture-warrior factions, sizeable and essential GOP constituencies that Bush has still managed to marginalize by a combination of ideological rigidity, insularity, and of course ineptitude. It seemed to me that, though he wasn’t on the ballot this year, Bush was going to thwart McCain’s ambitions one last time.

However, McCain’s stultifying performance on the campaign trail, which Kaplan rightly calls attention to in this piece, has me looking at McCain’s “Bush problem” from a different perspective. Perhaps at its most basic level, McCain’s Bush problem is that he’s taken the president’s approach to politicking and policy making a bit too much to heart. That is, McCain doesn’t see a need to understand all that much about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economy, and other issues that presidential nominees are called upon to address. And he seems to prefer to speak to voters who aren’t that knowledgeable about all that stuff. It’s as if he’s taken on the Bush attitude that he simply knows what’s right, indeed he embodies what’s right, simply by virtue of the kind of man he is. He may not know all the details, which after all don’t matter that much. But he’s got the “big picture,” and an instinctual feel for what needs to be done. He can tell between right and wrong, and can be counted on to do what’s right. And if you make a mistake on a little detail, don’t admit it because it’s not really a mistake; it’s just a little “gaffe,” something that an aide can clear up later. It’s as if, like Bush, he sees political advantage in getting things wrong in his public statements. Of course, McCain utterly lacks the homespun charm that Bush couches his factual and grammatical flubs in. But he tries to make up for it with the same bravado and self-righteousness, the same claims to mythic stature, the same appeal to trust him based on the kind of man he is, the same sense of “I know what’s right, and if I say it it’s right, even if they say it’s ‘wrong.’”

Even with his self-proclaimed “maverick” image, McCain’s Bush problem may in the end be a failure of his own political courage, a failure to stake out his own political persona, and instead an over-reliance on a moralistic and intellectually lazy approach to politics and policy, simply because it worked for Bush.