US President George W. Bush saluted Republican John McCain as the man to replace him on Tuesday at a convention featuring assaults on Democrat Barack Obama and a strong defense of McCain’s No. 2, Sarah Palin.
Bush, in a rarity for recent incumbent presidents, did not attend the party’s St Paul convention to nominate McCain for president, instead speaking briefly from the White House by satellite.
The stated reason for Bush’s absence was his need to manage the Hurricane Gustav emergency, but it could in the end have helped McCain distance himself from the unpopular Bush at a time when Democrats seek to join them at the hip politically.
PHOTO: AP
Bush said progress in bringing stability to Iraq through a US troop build-up was the direct result of the Arizona senator’s firmness in insisting that it take place in the face of Democratic opposition and the war’s unpopularity.
“The man we need is John McCain,” Bush said.
“He’s not afraid to tell you when he disagrees. Believe me, I know,” said Bush, who has had an uneasy relationship with the 72-year-old McCain over the years and defeated him in the 2000 race for the Republican nomination.
The Obama campaign fired back.
“The man George Bush needs may be John McCain, but the change America needs is Barack Obama,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said.
Republicans will nominate McCain and vice presidential running mate, Palin, 44, as their candidates this week to face Obama and his running mate, Senator Joe Biden, in the Nov. 4 election.
There was every indication McCain and other Republicans would stand by only the second woman ever picked as a major party’s vice presidential nominee.
Republicans like her pro-gun and anti-abortion stances and her history of government reform in Alaska in her two years as governor.
“He absolutely keeps her,” University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato said. “If he drops her, the election is over. There’s zero chance that he’ll drop her.”
Speaking at the convention, former Tennessee Republican senator Fred Thompson blasted “Washington pundits and media big shots” who had been critical of Palin.
“Let’s be clear ... the selection of Governor Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic. She is a courageous, successful reformer who is not afraid to take on the establishment,” he said.
Comparing Palin to Obama without mentioning the Democrat’s name, Thompson said she “has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit.”
Meanwhile, at least three people were arrested on Tuesday during a tense anti-poverty march that ended near the Republican convention arena. Police used tear gas and flash-bang grenades to scatter protesters they said were trying to get past security fences.
Police spokesman Tom Walsh said a group appeared to try to breach the Xcel Center, where the convention is under way, but that officers successfully moved them away from the arena.
Police estimated that 2,000 people participated in the march, which lasted about three hours.
Additional arrests were expected.
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