Dana Bash
Congressional Correspondent

Anyone walking by the Capitol steps this morning saw one of the first real images of the change that’s coming to Washington. Some 50 fresh-faced, newly-elected lawmakers were all smiles as they posed for their class picture.

But, that belied what was happening inside the halls of Congress.

It’s business as usual: Gridlock.

The old Congress is back in town this week for a lame-duck session, and the auto industry is begging lawmakers to avoid financial collapse.

But, calls for emergency assistance to Detroit are colliding with a partisan divide over where the money should come from.

On the Senate floor, we heard big speeches from the leadership about the need to work together.

Still, we could find no evidence that either side is sitting down to talk about how to bridge their differences on helping the auto industry.
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Dana Bash | BIO
CNN Political Correspondent

Trying to get more info, but I’m told by one Republican source here at the GOP Governors Association meeting that as of 830a , Gov. Sarah Palin was supposed to be at the presser without the row of fellow governors who stood silently behind her.

Another RGA source tells me the reason for that is a “long story” that i’ll be told later.

Haley Barbour told Evan Glass that they all met at 9a and by then it was “decided” that they’d all go out.

But , notice that the host, Florida’s Charlie Crist, wasn’t even there.
A Florida GOP source said “he didn’t know about it”

Also, it was slated for 20 minutes or so, but as you all saw, she took 4 questions…and the last, mine, was only because Gov Perry forced it.

If you couldn’t sense the awkward tension on TV, you could definitely feel it in the room….

Dana Bash | BIO
CNN Political Correspondent

During my regular morning call to McCain headquarters to see what’s up for the day, an aide told me we would finally see Joe Wurzelbacher – Joe the Plumber – appear with John McCain.

McCain’s entire closing theme is based on Wurzelbacher’s curbside encounter with Barack Obama over taxes. But Joe’s never been to a McCain rally.

About halfway through McCain’s first speech in Defiance, Ohio, however, I realized Joe wasn’t there. I called the aide I had spoken with in the morning, who told me that in fact Joe wasn’t going to be there after all.

Unfortunately, no one told the candidate.

As I was hanging up the phone, McCain started to yell for Joe, who he thinks is in the crowd.

“Joe’s with us today. Joe, where are you?” McCain called the into the crowd, “Where’s Joe? Is Joe here with us today? Joe, I thought you were here today (pause) All right, well, you’re all Joe the plumber, so all of you stand up and say – I thank you.”

Ooops.

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Dana Bash | Bio
CNN Congressional Correspondent

As McCain walked up the stairs to his Russell office, I tried to ask him a question.  He refused and very emphatically said as he kept walking, “I mean it. You’ll have to excuse me.  I’m serious…Thank you very much.”

A senior aide looked at me and joked, “It’s not like the old days, Dana.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty visits the Minnesota campaign headquarters of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain in St. Paul, Minn., July 10.

Dana Bash
CNN Political Correspondent
 
It’s VP tea leaf reading season, and a Republican source who attended a small private meeting with John McCain, Tuesday, in New Hampshire tells CNN that the Republican candidate dropped a serious hint about Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

The GOP source said “out of the blue” McCain told the gathering that he thinks they are “really going to like” Pawlenty.

Coincidently a McCain aide says Gov. Pawlenty was at McCain headquarters in northern Virginia today. He was apparently in town already for another meeting. Keep reading

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain listens to an audience member's question during a campaign stop in Rochester, N.H., Tuesday.

Dana Bash
CNN Political Correspondent

If you’re John McCain looking for some love while Barack Obama is overseas, you come to New Hampshire.

The line of Granite State voters waiting to get into McCain’s town hall at the Rochester Opera House snaked around the corner.

Most of them I spoke with were coming to see and hear the Arizona senator who has come to be a New Hampshire favorite son…and they greeted him with a rousing, lengthy standing ovation.

“It’s nice to see so many old friends,” he said as he tried to signal he was ready to talk.

“Coming back to New Hampshire is like coming home,” he said.

Voters here know full well the impact they have had on this election year. Keep reading

Deal Hudson at a press conference in Washington, D.C., Sept. 2003.

Dana Bash
CNN Political Correspondent

The McCain campaign deliberated much of Wednesday about how to handle a demand that Deal Hudson, a volunteer on outreach to Catholics, to step down.

They decided not to cut him loose.

“He’s a name on a list, a volunteer, so when are we going to start talking about gas prices, jobs and the issues facing Americans? The McCain campaign is all done with the gotcha games,” said campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.

The backstory: Keep reading

Dana Bash
CNN Correspondent

We were riding the bus from John McCain’s speech on his vision for 2013, after his 4 years as president.. a somewhat utopian speech.
 
We had just finished going ’round and ’round with him over whether his vision — or promise — of an end of the Iraq war by then, constituted a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. He repeatedly denied that and called it a false interpretation.

We asked him about President Bush’s comments before the Knesset, suggesting Democrats favor “appeasement” of terrorists in the way some Western leaders appeased

Hitler in the run-up to World War II. Noting that Barack Obama took that to be a shot at him, we asked Senator McCain if he agreed.

Mccain responded that he takes Bush at his word, but then criticized Obama repeatedly for saying he would talk with the president of Iran.

He was clearly eager to talk about this, saying,

“It is a serious error on the part of Sen. Obama that shows naivete and

inexperience and lack of judgment to say that he wants to sit down across the

table from an individual who leads a country who says that Israel is a stinking

corpse.”

McCain also recently charged that Obama is the favored candidate of  Hamas, which the U.S. has listed as a terrorist group. Obama called that McCain remark a “smear,” and today called Bush’s comment, “a false political attack.”

I later asked Senator McCain how much of an issue this will be and he said that of course national security – and their differences on it – will be big.

 A taste of the general election campaign to come.

Remember when John McCain ran for president eight years ago? The New York Times story today suggesting that he’s actually part of the problem in Washington has, of course, become a problem for his campaign, but also perhaps a help to it.

With his wife by his side, a subdued McCain issued an unequivocal denial, saying he’s “very disappointed in The New York Times piece. It’s not true.” That’s for every allegation in the lengthy article:

First, that he had a romantic relationship with Vicki Iseman. Mccain described his relationship with her this way: “Friends. See her occasionally at fund-raisers and appearances before the committee.”

And an assist from Mrs. McCain: “My children and I not only trust my husband, but know that that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family but disappoint the people of America.”

Then, McCain took on the charge that he used his powerful position on a Senate committee to help her corporate clients: “At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust nor make a decision which in any way would not be in the public interest and would would favor any one, or any organization.”

The Times also says eight years ago his advisers were so concerned about his relationship with Iseman that they tried to stop it: He denied that, too.

The one named source to go on the record in the Times story was McCain’s former top political adviser, John Weaver. He confirmed to CNN that he was worried and did confront her. However, he insists now that it wasn’t about a romantic relationship, but about her spreading word around town that McCain helped her lobbying clients.

“My concern wasn’t about anything John had done. It was about her comments. It was about access she claimed to have had,” Weaver told us.

McCain insists he knows nothing about that: “I never discussed it with John Weaver. As far as I know, there was no necessity for it. That’s a judgment that he made.”

But Iseman’s lobbying firm issued a statement calling the story fantasies of a former disgruntled campaign employee, without merit or foundation.

The irony in all this? The McCain campaign is relishing the controversy, because it allows the candidate trying to appeal to conservatives to pick a fight with what they see as a big enemy, The New York Times.

In fact, the campaign sent out a fund-raiser today calling on donors to send money to fight the “liberal establishment.”

–Dana Bash, 360° Correspondent