Obama's irritation with McCain flared up at Wednesday's news conference. | AP Photos Once again, Obama vs. McCain

President Barack Obama just finished his second presidential campaign — but he’s not finished lashing out at his opponent from his first.

Obama’s irritation at his 2008 rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain, flared Wednesday during the president’s first news conference since winning reelection. It was a startling moment in an otherwise unremarkable appearance — and hinted at lingering tensions with McCain.


At the heart of Obama’s outburst are Republican claims that United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice covered up the genesis of the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans. Rice has become the symbol of Republican anger over the administration’s handling of the incident — at a particularly uncomfortable moment for both Obama and Rice, who is in contention to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama steamed over Rice)

The White House explained the president’s reaction by saying that McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — who together blasted Rice at a Wednesday morning news conference of their own — received the same intelligence and talking points the administration gave Rice before her ill-fated, post-Benghazi turn on the Sunday morning talk shows. The two knew exactly why Rice said what she did, White House aides said.

But the subtext was just as important as Obama’s actual words: This was the man he beat in 2008. Despite a public rapprochement, they’ve never been close. McCain is fighting this round with Graham, his closest ally in the Senate, and New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, a rising star in the Republican Party. And their target is a woman who is close to Obama.

( Also on POLITICO: Full text, video of Obama’s news conference)

The Senate will decide on Obama’s nominee. And while Obama wouldn’t comment on whom he’s considering, he made clear he wouldn’t back down on Rice simply because Republicans object.

“If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me,” Obama said. “And I’m happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.”

( PHOTOS: What they’re saying about Susan Rice)

Rice, previously a relatively low-profile administration official, has been at the center of Republicans’ Benghazi cross hairs since her Sept. 16 turn on the Sunday talk shows. She repeated White House talking points and information delivered from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, arguing that the death of Libya Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others could be blamed on an anti-Islamic video posted to YouTube.

Obama appeared to relish defending Rice’s honor.

“When they go after the U.N. ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me,” he said.

McCain and Graham have made it their business to focus their ire on Rice. Throughout the day Wednesday, McCain’s attacks evolved from telling CBS’s morning show “she’s not qualified” to announcing at a Capitol news conference before Obama spoke that he and Graham “will do whatever’s necessary to block the nomination that’s within our power as far as Susan Rice is concerned.”

There McCain added that Rice conveyed information that was “clearly false.”

“It was overwhelming evidence that it was completely false and she should have known what the information, what the circumstances were and not tell the world on all the Sunday morning talk shows,” he said.

But after Obama upbraided him on national television, McCain modified his criticism. He argued on the Senate floor that Obama was the one at fault and Rice merely carried the administration’s message.

“I understand today that the president of the United States took some umbrage at statements that Sen. Ayotte, Sen. Graham and I have made concerning this issue,” McCain said in calling for a special Watergate-like committee to investigate the Benghazi episode.

Less than an hour after the president finished at his podium, McCain said Obama is responsible for the safety and security of diplomats abroad and “has not exercised those responsibilities and also has not informed the American people of the facts. This president and this administration has either been guilty of colossal incompetence or engaged in a coverup, neither of which are acceptable to the American people.”

This isn’t the first time since 2008 that Obama and McCain have been at odds.

Despite making post-Election Day statements similar to his conciliatory words Wednesday about Mitt Romney, Obama never developed a working relationship with McCain.

It was never in either man’s political interest to make it happen. Obama initially had a 60-seat Senate supermajority and didn’t need McCain’s legislative cooperation. McCain found himself with a primary challenger and needed to protect his conservative flank back home. The two didn’t meet frequently, if at all, after their highly publicized, post-election get-together, a White House aide said.

McCain handily won his 2010 Senate primary and coasted to reelection. But he lost his reputation as a maverick. On the campaign trail this fall, Obama cited McCain’s abandonment of the very immigration reforms he once proposed as evidence that Republicans refused to work with him on anything.

When McCain popped off Wednesday, White House aides pointed out that Rice, as the U.N. ambassador, had no responsibility for consulate security, diplomatic staff or Defense and CIA assets anywhere in the world. The aides also said that McCain and Graham defended Condoleezza Rice when she repeated faulty Bush administration intelligence about Iraq.

McCain’s spokeman, Brian Rogers, said the idea that McCain received the identical intelligence briefing as Rice “makes no sense.” Rogers pointed to an exchange between McCain and CBS’s Bob Schieffer during the same Sept. 16 “Face the Nation” episode on which Rice appeared in which McCain disputed her analysis of the incident.

“Most people don’t bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration,” McCain said then. “That was an act of terror, and for anyone to disagree with that fundamental fact I think is really ignoring the facts.”

Obama’s extended rebuke of McCain and Graham came just one question after he repeated his election night vow to invite his vanquished 2012 rival Romney to the White House. Striking a conciliatory tone, Obama praised Romney’s handling of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games and suggested he could offer ideas to make government more efficient.

And after a year of attacking Romney as a candidate seeking to further enrich his wealthy friends, Obama even said Romney could propose ways to help create new jobs.

“There may be ideas that he has with respect to jobs and growth that can help middle-class families that I want to hear,” Obama said.

He dropped that conciliatory tone when defending Rice.

Perhaps the element that most angered Obama was the idea that Graham and McCain are engaging in the traditional political games — fighting for cheap political points without regard for the facts of the matter.

“We’re after an election now,” Obama said. “I think it is important for us to find out exactly what happened in Benghazi, and I’m happy to cooperate in any ways that Congress wants.”

As the ambassador to the U.N., Rice has little to do with securing U.S. embassies and consulates abroad — as McCain and Graham know from their decades in Washington foreign policy circles, said Richard Clarke, chief counterterrorism adviser to Bill Clinton.

“To go after her for this is either being intentionally highly political or reflecting a total lack of understanding of how things work in Washington,” Clarke said. “I know Lindsey Graham and John McCain know better. These two guys are blaming her for something they know she had nothing to do [with].”

Rice prefaced her Sept. 16 comments with the caveat that she was delivering a preliminary assessment of the situation at the time.

Twelve days later the same Office of the Director of National Intelligence which briefed Rice ahead of her Sunday show appearances issued a revised statement “to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”

Juana Summers contributed to this report.