The NY Times notes that on his “No Surrender” tour championing the Iraq War and the “troop surge” John McCain has refrained from mentioning the B word, read Bush.

But even as he lashes his presidential campaign that much tighter to the war in Iraq, Mr. McCain is seeking to decouple his fortunes from those of Mr. Bush, in the latest chapter of a 10-year relationship that has been at times tortured, at times cordial, at times symbiotic.

So it is that Mr. McCain sprinkles his speeches not with references to Mr. Bush but to General Petraeus, a shift that not only mirrors the White House strategy of putting the military out front but also symbolically encapsulates a recognition of what many Republicans consider to have been a fundamental mistake of Mr. McCain in his candidacy: trying to present himself as Mr. Bush’s anointed successor and ideological heir.