Obama, McCain forged oh-so-fleeting alliance

[Dixie*Darling]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23873610/

Efforts to collaborate on ethics reform fell apart within a week
By Paul Kane

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... what began as a promising collaboration between two men bent on burnishing their reformist credentials collapsed after barely a week. The McCain-Obama relationship came undone amid charges and countercharges, all aired publicly two years ago in an exchange of stark and angry letters. Obama questioned whether McCain sided with GOP leaders rather than searching for a bipartisan solution; McCain accused Obama of "typical rhetorical gloss" and "self interested partisan posturing" by a newcomer seeking to ingratiate himself with party leaders.
"Please be assured I won't make the same mistake again," McCain wrote Obama on Feb. 6, 2006.

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On the stump Obama mocks McCain's maverick image, saying McCain "fell in line" with Republican orthodoxy on tax cuts after initially opposing the $1.3 trillion tax-cut plan in 2001. He tweaks McCain for surrounding himself with lobbyists as advisers, arguing that presidential ambition has trumped his reformer convictions.
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And McCain's camp has relentlessly questioned what the 46-year-old has done that has prepared him for the presidency.

"He really doesn't have any accomplishments. It's not a slight against Obama; he's only been in the Senate for a few years, and most of that time he was running for president," Mark Salter, McCain's former chief of staff and now senior campaign adviser, said in an interview.
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