NY Times:

Despite the shared advisers, there has been plenty of bitterness toward the Bush team among other McCain aides, who accused the Bush campaign of spreading rumors during the 2000 South Carolina primary that Mr. McCain had an illegitimate child. But Mr. McCain, who lost the primary and the nomination that year to Mr. Bush, eventually repaired his relationship with the president and campaigned for him in 2004. Some of Mr. McCain’s advisers admitted that they were slow to come around. “We were dyspeptic jerks who held grudges,” Mr. Salter said. One McCain adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could talk freely about internal campaign deliberations, said Sunday that while there were risks for Mr. McCain to appear with Mr. Bush, it would be a bad idea to keep Mr. Bush entirely at arm’s length. The reason, the adviser said, was that “you don’t leave a president who is popular within his own party out of your campaign activities, because then you’re following the campaign strategy of Al Gore.” The adviser was referring to the distance that Mr. Gore kept from President Bill Clinton when Mr. Gore, then vice president, was campaigning for the White House in 2000. Some Democrats have blamed Mr. Gore’s loss in part on his failure to embrace Mr. Clinton, who even as he was mired in scandal remained popular among Democrats. Mr. Black also said that much would depend on Mr. Bush. “When the time comes,” he said, “we’ll sit down and see what he’s willing to do.”