AFP | June 23, 2008

The Republican party’s presumptive presidential nominee John McCain is engaged in a delicate dance, distancing himself from US President George W. Bush while courting the conservative ideals of the outgoing president’s party.

Few of McCain’s top advisors are well known to the general public, and even fewer are directly linked to the highly unpopular Bush administration.

However neoconservatives, whose thinking has directed Bush’s foreign policy following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, are ever-present and powerful in McCain’s inner circle.

Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s chief foreign policy spokesman, in 2002 founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which agitated for the US invasion that was launched in 2003.

Scheunemann and Robert Kagan, another McCain advisor, head the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, which takes a hawkish line on foreign policy issues.

Their influence helps explain McCain’s hardline stance on Iraq, where he has vowed to keep American troops for "as long as it takes," as well on Iran, Cuba, North Korea and even Russia, which he wants tossed out of the Group of Eight industrialized nations club over an erosion of democracy.

McCain, who has a reputation for being more independent-minded than most right-wing Republican leaders, is also close to independent Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, the 2004 nominee for vice president, alongside failed presidential contender Al Gore. Lieberman’s support for the Iraq war has put him starkly at odds with liberal Democrats.

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