John McCain's presidential campaign has apparently found help to battle its extreme case of Bush separation anxiety. Desperate to distance the Republican nominee from the most unpopular president in modern American history, the McCain camp is closely coordinating with the White House to create the facade of separation between John McCain and George W. Bush.

As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, senior McCain advisor and GOP lobbyist extraordinaire Charlie Black detailed a close working relationship with President Bush's staff. Acknowledging that George W Bush and John McCain "have an excellent relationship," Black at a lunch hosted the Christian Science Monitor:

"...was clear that Bush's White House team is helping the presumptive Republican nominee at every turn of the campaign.

Black said the White House got a 'head's up' earlier this week before McCain called out Bush for his poor handling of hurricane Katrina in 2005."

As the Politico and Reuters recently detailed, manufacturing the appearance of distance between President Bush and his would-be Republican successor is essential if John McCain is to have any hope of capturing the White House. Over 70% of Americans disapprove of President Bush, while more than 80% believe the country is on the wrong track. And with John McCain having adopted virtually the entire Bush agenda on everything from Iraq, tax cuts for the wealthy and health care to the Supreme Court, overturning Roe v. Wade and nurturing the religious right, Americans have good reason to view a McCain presidency as a third Bush term.

So, in fits and starts, the McCain and Bush camps helped start the "Great Walk Back" for the Arizona Senator.

On Thursday, for example, Senator McCain criticized President Bush's appearance five years earlier before a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. McCain this week in Cleveland claimed, "I thought it was wrong at the time." (Unfortunately, McCain's gambit was interrupted in the form of a June 2003 interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto, in which McCain responded to Cavuto's assertion that "many argue the conflict isn't over" by firing back, "Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier?")

The Bush administration's calamitous bungling of the response to Hurricane Katrina, too, provided McCain an opportunity to symbolically create some space with the current occupant of the Oval Office. At a stop on his recent "Forgotten Places" tour in New Orleans, McCain branded Bush's leadership "disgraceful" and doing his best Elie Wiesel impersonation, declared "never again." (Sadly, there too, McCain ran into trouble, and not merely because he publicly pondered what to "tear down" in New Orleans. As it turns out, as the city was being devastated by Katrina in 2005, John McCain was being feted on his 69th birthday - by President George W. Bush.)

And so it goes for John McCain. The same man who during a 2000 South Carolina debate rejected George W. Bush's embrace by angrily saying, "Don't give me that shit and take your hands off me" by March 2008 warmly accepted Bush's support by proclaiming the President " a man who I have a great admiration, respect and affection" for. And the same John McCain who said "I'm not running on the Bush presidency" doesn't merely now advocate Bush's policies foreign and domestic. Mr. Straight Talk said in February:

"I would be proud to have President Bush campaign with me and support me in any way that he feels is appropriate. And I would appreciate it."

Apparently, John McCain didn't get Charlie Black's memo. In the ultimate campaign '08 irony, McCain must perform a delicate dance away from George W. Bush, a dance tightly choreographed with Bush's own staff.

Then again, John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign is nothing if not ironic. The supposed maverick has repeatedly reversed positions and compromised core principles to help pave his road to the White House. The Arizona Senator, whose family assets include 8 homes and a stash purportedly worth over $100 million, refuses to disclose his wife's tax returns, all while calling Barack Obama an "elitist." And now, John McCain is planning a fall campaign based on distancing himself from George W. Bush, a strategy closely coordinated with the Bush White House itself.