Just wait until Barack Obama's speechwriters get ahold of this one. As of last week, John McCain has voted in support of President Bush's policies 100 percent of the time this year!
Of course, that's based on only six votes.
That's the result of CQ's latest tally of the future nominees' voting records in the Senate this year, which includes all of the votes that have taken place through the end of last week. It covers all the times they have sided with Bush -- the measure Obama prefers to use -- and all the times they have broken with the party line, the measure McCain prefers.
Obama has made an issue of McCain's support of Bush, for obvious reasons (Bush is a bit radioactive with the public right now). In his speech Tuesday night, Obama noted that McCain voted with Bush 95 percent of the time last year.
But McCain missed more than half of the votes last year, and the ones where he sided with Bush don't always mean what they seem to mean -- since many of them were on immigration, an issue where most Democrats actually agreed with Bush and McCain.
This year is no different. McCain has only made 26 percent of the votes this year, and Obama has only made 44 percent. So their scores aren't based on a huge number of roll calls. (Through last week, the Senate had taken 140 votes, and only 28 of them were based on issues where Bush took a public position.)
And even with so few votes, McCain sided with Bush this year for a mix of reasons, so it's hard to say he was always in lockstep with Bush on issues Democrats opposed.
He certainly was in some cases. Three of the votes, for example, were on a bill to authorize warrantless spying. McCain supported Bush by voting for the final bill -- which won more Senate Republicans than Democrats -- and by voting against two amendments that would have altered the bill to the Democrats' liking.
For those who are keeping track, one of the amendments would have required the program to comply with the 1978 law that governs foreign surveillance. The other would have gotten rid of a provision that protects telecommunications companies from lawsuits that participated in the the surveillance.
McCain also voted against an intelligence authorization bill that would have banned the use of any interrogation technique that's not approved by the U.S. Army Field Manual. (Bush vetoed the bill.) That was a bit of an awkward vote for the senator who pushed a ban on torture through Congress three years ago over Bush's objections. In a statement at the time, McCain said he voted against this year's bill because "(t)he Field Manual, a public document written for military use, is not always directly translatable to use by intelligence officers."
But his other two votes in support of Bush were on the economic stimulus bill -- a measure that every Democrat and most Republicans supported. You won't hear a lot of Democrats this year trashing McCain for supporting the economic stimulus.
Even Obama voted with Bush -- once. Last month, he voted against a Democratic leadership amendment to the supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war that would have recommended, but not required, the withdrawal of most U.S. troops by June 2009.
But again, it's a misleading example. Bush opposed the amendment because he won't accept a timetable to withdraw troops. Obama voted against it because he wanted to require the withdrawal, not just suggest it.
And where did they show independence from their party -- the measure McCain prefers? It hasn't happened much this year. McCain has sided with his party 93 percent of the time, and Obama has stuck with the party line pretty much all the time -- on 98 percent of the votes where most Democrats voted against most Republicans.
McCain has gone against the grain on only two votes this year. And both times, believe it or not, were to spend more money than most Republicans wanted. He supported a Democratic amendment to the budget resolution (a non-binding spending blueprint) to allow pregnant women to get health coverage under the State Children's Health Insurance Program, a hot election-year topic. He also voted for a measure to allow an extra $1 billion to be spent on the Indian Health Service, an important issue in McCain's home state of Arizona.
Obama voted against his party only once -- on the same Iraq troop withdrawal amendment where he sided with Bush.
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