From The New York Times comes a report that the McCain camp will ask the White House for the President’s participation in major fund-raising events but will only seek limited appearances. As the article points out McCain faces a tuff choice, while Bush still remains popular with many core conservatives his embrace could turn off undecided and moderate voters who make up the core of McCain’s base.

From the article:

“What an incumbent president can do is help a new nominee with fund-raisers, maybe with unifying the party, maybe with getting out the vote in Republican areas,” said Charles Black, a top adviser to Mr. McCain and an outside adviser to the White House who has been part of every Republican presidential campaign since 1976. “But the important thing to remember is, the nominee is on their own. And no president, no matter how popular and effective politically, can carry somebody.”

Ed Gillespie, the White House counselor to Mr. Bush and the chairman of the Republican National Committee during Mr. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, echoed Mr. Black. “Senator McCain has his own identity,” Mr. Gillespie said in an interview, “and he’s going to be campaigning as John McCain and the things that John McCain believes in.”

There is a precedent: President Ronald Reagan campaigned only selectively and made only rare appearances at the side of George Bush in the 1988 campaign, even though Mr. Bush was his vice president.

So look for Mr. Bush to make solo appearances on behalf of Mr. McCain before evangelicals and in Republican pockets across the country, and to campaign in places where there are important races for the House and Senate, like Idaho and Kansas, which will not be critical destinations for the Republican nominee.