While President Bush has conspicuously stayed on the sidelines in the final days until the election, others close to him are venturing out on behalf of embattled Republican candidates.
First Lady Laura Bush, always a popular draw for Republicans, was in Mississippi on Thursday to stump for Sen. Roger Wicker (R), and on Monday she will do the same for House candidate Brett Guthrie at a rally in Kentucky.
{mosads}That the first lady is hitting the road while the president stays in Washington speaks volumes to this election season's dilemma: Republican candidates have to run away from the administration and its policies while still looking for help in races that were considered runaways in once-reliably red states.
"I want to thank you very much for all the work you've already done and the work you're going to do now at the very last — we're just a few days away from Election Day, and so I urge you to redouble your efforts, go to the phone banks, walk door to door, make sure you take everyone you know to the polls on Tuesday," Laura Bush said Thursday. "Make sure they're all Roger Wicker voters when you take them."
The president made similar remarks to a group of Republican staffers earlier this week. But instead of firing up Air Force One and hitting the trail to put his arm around the shoulder of a struggling incumbent, the president trekked up Capitol Hill to the Republican National Committee (RNC) headquarters in a trip that was not announced to the White House press corps beforehand.
One RNC aide who was in the room when the president thanked staffers for their help said Bush told them that his would-be Republican successor John McCain "is in striking distance and he expects our organized efforts to push him over the edge."
That would be the same McCain who appears with the president only in commercials paid for and approved by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama or the Democratic National Committee (DNC). McCain spends most of his days seeking as much distance between he and the president as he can find.
White House press secretary Dana Perino has said repeatedly that Bush has had to cancel some fundraising events over the past few weeks in order to focus on the financial crisis, and Bush joked when he endorsed McCain in the spring that he would stay as far away from McCain as the Arizona senator wanted him to.
But as analysts are predicting significant to overwhelming gains for Democrats in both the House and Senate, some Republicans clearly believe that one Bush is more help than hinderance with only a few days left to go.
And the first lady isn't the only current occupant of the White House getting in on the act.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who enjoys approval ratings lower than the president's, is scheduled to attend a Victory rally in Wyoming on Saturday.
In the most recent poll in Wyoming, a SurveyUSA poll from more than a week ago, McCain was leading Obama by 21 points.