Bush's Discreet McCainCampaigning

President George W. Bush participated in his first public collection of funds for the Republican candidate on Wednesday, June 25th in Michigan, thus marking a new step in his participation, until now discrete, for John McCain’s campaign. The price of a dinner plate organized by the Max M. Fisher National Republican Award was $1000 per person (636 Euros), and it cost $5000 to pose in a picture with George Bush. Around 300 people met to finance the Republican Party’s branch in Michigan.

In a twenty minute speech, George Bush discussed the theme of national security, defining John McCain as the only candidate “who knows what has to be done to convince our enemies.” Then he added that during the November elections, “Americans are going to have to make a clear choice on the way to protect our country and win the war against terrorism.”

Without once mentioning Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s name, the president nonetheless stated, “The other camp talks a lot about hope, and this summarizes their politics for Iraq. They want to talk about Iraq by hoping that nothing bad happens.”

Despite his fall in the polls, the American president remains a formidable “fundraiser” in the most closed Republican circles. According to the Republican party, George W. Bush has participated in twenty-nine funds collections that divided around $66 million (42 million Euros) among the eight Republican candidates, whose principal beneficiary was John McCain. But of all these events, the dinner organized on Wednesday, June 25th is the first to have been publicly held–the other receptions had always taken place privately, in private residences.

Sixty Seconds

In reality, the Republican candidate very rarely agrees with the president. Since George Bush’s official support for John McCain after his March victory in the Republican primaries, they have only been seen together in public one time, in May, for sixty seconds at the Phoenix airport. Although only 28% of Americans favorably judge George Bush’s work, John McCain’s campaign team wanted him to give a role that, in the eyes of the public, did not associate him directly to the candidate.

Mr. McCain’s advisors clearly made it known that he didn’t want the current president to appear too often alongside the GOP’s official candidate, using the argument that the Republican candidate needed to have “a place in the spotlight.”