Howard Kurtz has penned a good column about John McCain’s role (or lack thereof) in the Romney campaign. The premise, itself, is interesting, but I found a few of the quotes buried within the story to be equally noteworthy. For example, Kurtz writes,
McCain told me that he and Clinton chatted about policy in occasional phone calls during his 2008 campaign, even as the former president was backing Obama.
So Bill Clinton was chatting about policy on phone calls with John McCain — while he was running against Barack Obama? This strikes me as interesting. (Sure, maybe it was perfectly innocent? — or maybe it underscores the amount of animosity that still lingered after Hillary’s primary defeat…)
Seeking to explain McCain’s relative lack of involvement in this year’s presidential campaign, there’s also this from Steve Schmidt:
“If you’re the Republican nominee, the campaign is about the future,” says Steve Schmidt, who oversaw McCain’s 2008 effort. “John McCain is very much a figure of the immediate past.”
Pretty harsh words for his former boss, don’t you think? (At least he said McCain was from the immediate past.)