Republican presidential candidate John McCain was anything but subtle Wednesday as he took swipes at the Bush administration during a meticulously staged appearance with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the bustling docks of Los Angeles Harbor.
President Bush's record on global warming? "Terrible," McCain declared. His pursuit of the Iraq war? "A train wreck."
If the point of the Arizona senator's visit was to put distance between himself and his party's unpopular president, McCain was following a pattern set by Schwarzenegger in his reelection campaign. For McCain, the task is especially important because his vocal support for Bush's recent troop buildup in Iraq threatens a voter backlash.
In what was billed as a nonpolitical event to call for tougher federal action to stop global warming, McCain joined Schwarzenegger for a hazy morning helicopter tour of the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports. The Republican duo flew over the future site of a hydrogen power plant that would pump carbon dioxide into the ground instead of the air.
Later, standing side by side amid the roar of engines as cranes hoisted cargo containers onto ships and trucks, Schwarzenegger lavished praise on McCain ("a great, great senator, a great national leader"), raising the question of whether he supports him for president.
All signs to the contrary, Schwarzenegger said, "We're not doing presidential politics here" -- but not before McCain wisecracked: "I think it's the endorsement, yes."
One of McCain's chief Republican rivals, Rudolph W. Giuliani, had to settle recently for a private steak dinner and cigars with Schwarzenegger in the governor's Sacramento hotel suite.
But on the San Pedro docks, Schwarzenegger offered McCain access to his usual retinue of trailing TV crews, and McCain used the opportunity to pound Bush on a number of fronts.
"I would assess this administration's record on global warming as terrible," McCain said, recalling that he got "no cooperation from the administration" at Senate hearings on the subject. He pronounced himself "very happy to see the president mention global warming and a renewed commitment from the administration to this issue." But he added tartly: "It's long overdue."
(White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined to respond directly to McCain but said Bush had "set an ambitious goal for our nation to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and we're meeting it.")
