Video: Watch the Comment Central interview with Michael Gerson

A former senior aide to President Bush today hailed Barack Obama is an “extraordinary political talent” who would make a tougher opponent for John McCain than Hillary Clinton.

In a remarkably frank interview with Daniel Finkelstein, Comment Editor of The Times, Michael Gerson said Obama's ascent to the White House would be “one of the great culminating moments in American history”.

The former chief speechwriter to President Bush insisted that, despite the recent controversies dogging Mr Obama, the Illinois senator nevertheless remained the greatest threat to the Republican Party.

Describing himself as “very impressed” with the Democratic frontrunner, Mr Gerson said: “There’s a lot of talk now that he might be a weaker candidate than people thought. I think he’s an extraordinary political talent.”

“He’ll be a strong candidate,” he continued. “I think John McCain would have an easier job with Hillary Clinton who is actually a poor candidate, has poor political skills, so it’s a hard one to predict.”

Mr Obama, who hopes to be America’s first black president, was “likeable, a non threatening liberal in the same way that Ronald Reagan was, in America, a non-threatening conservative. Eloquent, genuinely eloquent, good on his feet, but also a compelling figure in the context of American history.”

Such praise could hardly come from unlikelier quarters. Far from the average Obama admirer, Mr Gerson headed the White House speechwriting team from President Bush’s inauguration until June 2006 and is credited with the “Axis of Evil” and “smoking gun/mushroom cloud” metaphors used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Originally recruited by Karl Rove to join the Bush presidential campaign in 1999, he also served for six years as a senior White House policy advisor.

An Evangelical Christian who in 2005 was named by TIME magazine as the ninth most influential Evangelical in America, his conservative credentials also include a stint as senior policy adviser to the right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation.

Yet Mr Gerson lauds the prospect of Mr Obama’s inauguration as president as “historic”.

“So much of our history is the history of race and it would be an historic day in America for him to take the oath of office on the West Front of the Capitol, given how divisive these issues have been.”

He continued: “It will take place 100 yards from where there used to be slave pens, where slaves were sold in the 19th century. It will be a dramatic moment, one of the great culminating moments of American history.”

Mr Gerson also offered an incisive analysis of the challenges facing Mr McCain, the Republican nominee.

One of most prominent voices in support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and a key architect of the recent military surge, Mr McCain’s association with the Bush administration’s foreign policy had previously been seen as his main weakness.

But Mr Gerson said that as the eyes of the electorate increasingly turned inward, away from a more stable Iraq and towards the ailing economy, that perception had been turned on its head.

Republicans had been expected to choose a break with the Bush presidency but it hadn’t worked out that way, Mr Gerson said.

“John McCain in some ways represents the most foreign policy continuity with George Bush, a kind of moral internationalism, interventionism, liberal internationalism.”

On a domestic level, the Arizona senator was also much more sympathetic to the Bush doctrine of compassionate conservatism - highly controversial on the right - than many of the defeated candidates, he said.

Mr McCain’s principal difficulty was now his lack of engagement on domestic issues, Mr Gerson argued.

A foreign policy and defence hawk, Mr McCain has openly acknowledged that he does not have as much understanding or experience of economic matters.

“He has less engagement, less intellectual interest, in domestic issues like education or welfare or poverty issues, or even economic issues,” Mr Gerson said. “It’s hard to determine what McCainism is on some of these issues because he hasn’t adequately defined it.”

Mr Gerson now works as an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post and is a senior fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations.

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