Scott McClellan, making the media rounds to promote his book and push back against the ferocious counter-attack by Bush loyalists, declined to come out tonight for John McCain and said he liked what he had heard from Barack Obama.



"I haven't made a decision," McClellan told Katie Couric on CBS's "Evening News," when asked if he was backing the Arizona senator. McClellan paid homage to McCain, saying that the Republican nominee had "governed from the center, and that's where I am."



But without prompting, he said he was "intrigued by Sen. Obama's message."



"It's a message that is very similar to the one that Gov. Bush ran on in 2000," McClellan said.



He offered similar comments about Obama on ABC's "World News Tonight."



In his book, the former Bush spokesman describes his upbringing in a house where his mother was the moderate Democrat mayor of Austin (Carole Keeton Strayhorn later became a Republican before running as an independent for governor in 2006). McClellan recounts how, when he first came to work for Bush in 1999, he admired the governor's willingness to work across party lines in the Texas capitol.

McClellan is the third high-profile member of Bush's original Texas circle to express interest, if not support, for Obama. Matthew Dowd and Mark McKinnon, both top-level advisers in Bush's 2000 and 2004 runs and former Democrats, have also praised the likely Democratic nominee.

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