Party Lines

McCain Sounds Off

Says Obama's had a "bad beginning."

The campaign's over, but John McCain's still in fighting mode, slamming Obama's stimulus and its effect on bipartisanship. “It was a bad beginning,” he said of the legislative process that resulted in the $787 billion stimulus bill. “It was a bad beginning because it wasn’t what we promised the American people, what President Obama promised the American people--that we would sit down together.” Obama's trip over to Capitol Hill was appreciated, McCain told CNN's John King today, but “that’s not how you negotiate a result...I hope the next time we will sit down together and conduct truly bipartisan negotiations. This was not a bipartisan bill.” Ever the maverick, the Arizona senator said his party was guilty of treating Democrats the same way during the Bush years: “Republicans were guilty of this kind of behavior. I’m not saying that we did things different. But Americans want us to do things differently and they want us to work together.”