Bush gets a major boost from McCain? Who would have thought that? Well I did. At the end of the day John McCain is a Republican and for all the daydreaming about a Kerry/McCain ticket and the hope that someday McCain will take the reins of the Republican Party to steer it away from the direction that George W. Bush has given it, what we need above all is a reality check. Make no mistake, I have always been a strong proponent of the Arizona Senator but when he lost out in the 2000 primaries he must have realized that the only way forward was to join the ranks of the party and to support the new leader. The straight-talking express was great while it lasted but if McCain had continued to ride his bus after 2000 he would have been on a road to political irrelevance, rejected by the Republicans, viewed with suspicion by the Democrats. If you want to effect change, desire to direct your party away from its present course, better to stay in your party to help and shape that direction.

And so it is with Andrew Sullivan. Bush’s intention to find a way to outlaw gay marriage appears to have been the final straw for Andrew who has now stated he can no longer support Bush. Whether or not Sullivan was ever inside the Republican tent is not relevant, one of the strongest Bush supporters in the blogosphere has thrown the towel in the ring and decided to migrate to political no-man’s land as supporting Kerry would, judging from Andrew’s site, be unthinkable. My sense is that Andrew has overreacted and failed to take a route that in the long run would have yielded much better results and that is to stay under the Republican umbrella as a constructive long-term contributor. Ronald Reagan became President of the US at age sixty-nine, and one of the reasons for that late ascendancy to power was that he had first relegated himself to the political wilderness after he left the Democratic Party and then it took him close to fifteen years to change the course of the Republican Party. Change takes time and if you really believe in the conservative underpinnings of the Republican Party you do not achieve that much by slamming the door and declaring you no longer are supporting its nominee for the White House. But then Andrew is a very popular journalist and blogger, so he can probably take a few liberties but I don’t think Republican strategists are keen to sound out our Daily Disher in the near future.

That however doesn’t change my view about Andrew. He was the first blogger I discovered and he’s still the first port of call during morning coffee. I agree with him on most issues and share the intelligent comments of this blogger on the abuse that has been hurled at Andrew. But let’s face it, Bush’s first term has been marked by many ups and downs and it is the right of every Bush supporter, wherever he or she is, to criticize his record and come up with solutions because for many of us, and I certainly speak Andrew’s language here, we believe in the conservative dream that the Republican visionary Reagan laid out in the 1980s. Running up huge deficits by erroneously comparing 2004 to 1982 deserves criticism, launching a successful justifiable pre-emptive strike against Iraq only to see it tarnished by poor execution raises questions and going after one particular minority in an anachronistic way deserves disapproval. But that doesn’t mean the support for Bush should end abruptly. It means that Bush should listen to these critics, both in and outside his party, and recalibrate some of his policies in order to cement the achievements of his first term.

Barring any disaster Bush will probably have a fairly uncomplicated journey to re-election; Kerry is just not credible presidential material. That in turn means that Bush will have to start thinking about his legacy and about giving true meaning to his uniter-not-a-divider mantra. To me there’s only one real option open to him and that is to act on some of the criticisms and think about a reshuffle of his team as there are some clear deficiencies in the group that currently executes the President’s wishes. By having stayed inside his party John McCain can play a role in that process and exert some influence, I still am enough of a dreamer to see him take over the Pentagon, who knows. Sullivan has in a way disqualified himself for a while to exercise influence in conservative circles. Given his well-thought out ideas, views and abilities that’s a pity, but then to help bring about change in the Republican camp may take a very long time and Sullivan is surely young enough to reconsider some of his rash decisions.