WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain, the maverick Republican who challenged President Bush in 2000, has found his own unique way of campaigning for his one-time rival.
It includes publicly defending John Kerry.
In recent weeks, McCain has seemed to drift away from his task as a partisan working for Bush's re-election. Instead, he has cast himself as an unofficial mediator in the no-holds-barred fight between Bush and Kerry.
Yesterday, in a nationally televised interview, the Arizona senator sided with Kerry against charges trumpeted in Bush's new TV ads that the Massachusetts senator has a dismal voting record on military issues.
"No, I do not believe he is, quote, `weak on defense,'" McCain told NBC, in response to a question about Kerry. "I don't agree with him on some issues, clearly, but I decry this negativism that's going on on both sides."
McCain, who is co-chairing Bush's re-election campaign in Arizona, did not offer any positive words about the president during the interview.
Last week, McCain, 67, briefly flirted with the far-fetched idea of becoming Kerry's running-mate, noting that the two are close friends.
Later, he joined just three other Republicans in a budget vote that defied Bush and Republican leaders, making it harder for them to achieve the centerpiece of their agenda: more tax cuts.
And days before that, he had criticized the president in another TV interview for using emotionally charged images of the aftermath of Sept. 11 in his first campaign ads.
Raising the tone
McCain's aides describe the senator's unorthodox campaign tactics as his way of trying to elevate the tone of an increasingly rancorous presidential race. His support for Bush is as solid as ever, they say, but he won't back the president's attacks on a close friend and colleague.
"Senator McCain will continue to affirmatively campaign for President Bush," said Andrea Jones, a spokeswoman. "He will not attack his friend John Kerry."
The Bush campaign brushed aside McCain's break with its message and instead seized on the Arizona senator's assertion, in yesterday's interview, that Kerry "is responsible for his voting record ... and he'll have to explain it."
"As John McCain indicated, the record is appropriate to discuss, and the record clearly suggests that John Kerry is weak on national defense," said a Bush spokesman, Kevin Madden.
Touch of revenge?
