Obama reaches out for McCain's counsel

[RamboLiberal]

Not long after Senator John McCain returned last month from an official trip to Iraq and Pakistan, he received a phone call from President-elect Barack Obama.

As contenders for the presidency, the two had hammered each other for much of 2008 over their conflicting approaches to foreign policy, especially in Iraq. (He'd lose a war! He'd stay a hundred years!) Now, however, Obama said he wanted McCain's advice, people in each camp briefed on the conversation said. What did he see on the trip? What did he learn?

It was just one step in a post-election courtship that historians say has few modern parallels, beginning with a private meeting in Obama's transition office in Chicago just two weeks after the vote. On Monday night, McCain will be the guest of honor at a black-tie dinner celebrating Obama's inauguration.

Over the last three months, Obama has quietly consulted McCain about many of the new administration's potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender's answers to questions McCain had suggested.

McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues "that many of these appointments he would have made himself," said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close McCain friend.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/19/america/19mccain.php

[TheKentuckian]

1. Sounds like we have secured McCain's vote in a lot of areas

You know he wants to be Ms. Popularity, as he was always railing about not being Ms. Popularity.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Seriously...why? McCain never struck me as especially bright or knowledgable

about anything. I suppose it's to secure his help and Senate votes by boosting his ego, but still...I really don't want Obama to receive advice from the guy who thought Sarah Palin was his soul mate.

[nodramamama]

3. But isn't McCain out of touch?

That's what was being said in the campaign (and I agreed).
Does it make sense to seek advice, specially on Iraq, from an out-of-touch conservative politician?

[wyldwolf]

4. hmm... we may get those 60 votes we covet on some issues...

[wmbrew0206]

5. Ding, Ding, Ding, We have a winner!

As long as Norm doesn't steal Al Senate seat in Minn. then we only need one republican to break ranks and kill any threat of a filibuster. If that one is McCain, so be it.

[wyldwolf]

7. Obama-McCain alliance predicted

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) predicts an Obama-McCain alliance, saying that if McCain's legislative record "is any guide, he will not just join with Obama but lead the charge in Congress on global warming, immigration 'reform,' the closing of Guantanamo, federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, and importation of prescription drugs."

"But McCain won't stop there in his effort to rehabilitate himself in the media's -- or maybe his own -- eyes. He will forge common ground on a long list of initiatives that go far beyond where he has gone before, including the stimulus package."

[mucifer]

6. McCain just showed up to one of the D.C. MLK celebrations this afternoon.