Bush's (Mixed) Blessing

John McCain almost certainly isn't the Republican that President Bush and Vice President Cheney would have hand-picked to succeed them -- but a McCain victory in November now represents their only hope of preventing all they have wrought from coming undone.

So, with McCain having sewn up the Republican nomination last night, Bush is welcoming his would-be successor to the White House today like royalty. First comes the ceremonial red-carpet reception in the North Portico. Then lunch in Bush's private dining room. Then the formal embrace in the Rose Garden.

Sure, there's been a fair amount of bad blood over the years between McCain and the Bush team, most notably during the bitter Republican primary in 2000. But now that all feels like ancient history.

On a personal level, McCain has put a lot of effort into ingratiating himself to Bush and his base. And he has virtually abandoned any major policy differences, choosing to hew a line nearly identical to Bush's on the most seminal political issues of the day.

When it comes to the war in Iraq, responding to the global threat of what McCain calls "transcendent radical Islamic extremism," making the Bush tax cuts permanent, opposing universal health care or appointing ultra-conservatives to the Supreme Court, McCain -- unlike whoever ends up with the Democratic nomination -- doesn't threaten to roll back the most consequential elements of the Bush presidency. Quite the contrary.

But as I wrote in my Jan. 15 column, polls show that 79 percent of Americans say the next president should set the nation on a new course rather than follow the direction in which Bush has been leading.

So for McCain, today's embrace with Bush is the classic double-edged sword. On the one hand, there is something undeniably compelling about the symbolism of one Republican standard-bearer handing the torch to another, surrounded by the pomp and power of the White House. It will also help McCain with Bush's core supporters. But on the other hand, Bush is damaged goods, deeply unpopular not just with Democrats but also independents, and the walking embodiment of what Americans evidently are eager to put behind them.

Michael D. Shear and Peter Slevin write in The Washington Post that today's endorsement is "intended to cement the senator as the political heir of his former rival."

But Mark Silva blogs for Tribune that "the public embrace of a president whose public approval has hovered at an average of 33 percent for the past year in the Gallup Poll will readily be taken by his Democratic opponent as a symbol that a vote for McCain is a vote for a continuation of the Bush White House."

David Gregory reports for NBC News: "A source close to Bush says McCain has to be careful with a Bush embrace.

"'Better to do it now rather than later,' this source says, 'Get it out of the way.'

"Bush can pass the baton to McCain to help with party unity and declare McCain the future of the party. McCain needs all those things. McCain, the source says, can then say to Bush, I need you to do these things without having to associate too closely with him."