Is This What the Winner Gets?

Now that he's wrapped up the Republican nomination, Arizona Sen. John McCain and his wife Cindy went to the White House today to receive the blessing of the current occupant of the Oval Office, George W. Bush.

It certainly made for the kind of photo I never expected to see eight years ago, after Bush and his campaign staff savaged McCain in South Carolina, demolished McCain's reputation and his bid for the nomination and gave the country a taste of what they were capable of when their backs were against the wall.

But the nomination belongs to McCain, and after humbling himself for the kind of people he pandered to in the last year or so, I guess it's not surprising that he wanted the endorsement of the president. Even with the president's abysmal approval ratings.

Even with the ugly things that Bush and Karl Rove said and implied about McCain in 2000.

It seems clear that neither man wanted the photo-op moment to go on any longer than necessary. The whole thing was over in about 10 minutes.