2008—The Maverick Is Tamed

The end of the Bush presidency was near as the economy tanked and Wall Street scandals dominated the political landscape in 2008. An unpopular President George W. Bush was about to leave a country, ready to head in another direction. The irony in the president’s dismal poll ratings was that he became a liability to the Republican nominee Senator John McCain, his chief rival for the 2000 Republican nomination. McCain was no strong supporter of the president—only when it came to the president’s handling of the Iraq war and the infamous “surge.” McCain had to put on a facade like a painted veil during the 2008 campaign for a president whose campaign team had only eight years previously destroyed his presidential ambitions with a vicious smear campaign in the South Carolina primary. Perhaps in the end John McCain felt that bad karma had done its justice on the Bush presidency.