Selective Bush appearances deemed best for McCain

No side-by-side shots

John McCain’s campaign advisers will ask the White House to deploy President Bush for major Republican fund-raising, but they do not want the president to appear too often at his side, according to top aides.

But even as the consensus was that McCain needed to “stand in the sun” on his own, as one adviser put it, without the large shadow cast by President Bush, left unsaid was the difficult calculus the McCain campaign faces: Using George Bush enough to try to make the tough sell of McCain to conservatives but not so much that he will drive away the independents and some moderate Democrats that McCain is counting on in November

The New York Times covers the conundrum faced by McCain.