In today’s White House press briefing, spokesperson Dana Perino struggled to name the President’s major accomplishments in light of tomorrow’s election. “We have learned from mistakes. … So a lot of things have improved,” she said. Perino complained about Bush’s abysmal approval ratings, claiming they are like a high school popularity contest:

And this President was tested by a lot of different issues and I think he’s taken those issues head on, and we can be proud of how we’ve addressed them. Everybody would like to be popular. You can all remember that back in high school, everyone really wanted to be popular. Some of us just weren’t. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have principles and values that you stay true to. And that’s what this President has done, and it’s what he’s taught a lot of us, including me.

Watch it:

Stumping in Kentucky today for Republican congressional candidate Brett Guthrie today, First Lady Laura Bush joked about comparisons between her husband and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quipping that “it seems like George has been on the ticket this entire time”:

Bush also joked that she was looking forward to tomorrow’s election “because it seems like George has been on the ticket this entire time” – a clear reference to Democrats’ attempts to link McCain with President Bush.

Bush also praised Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who didn’t actually attend the rally. McConnell’s camp claimed it was “not due to the low popularity of President Bush.”

Today, the right wing — enthusiastically joined by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) — attacked Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for advocating in a January interview a cap and trade plan that would mandate new coal plants to be built with carbon capture technology. McCain said he wanted to control emissions, but insisted, “I’m not going to let our coal industry go bankrupt.” Palin said Obama has been “talking about bankrupting the coal industry,” and pledged, “John McCain and I, we will not let that happen to the coal industry.”

Now former governor Mitt Romney is using McCain’s attacks against Obama to attack McCain himself. On Glenn Beck’s radio show today, he denounced McCain’s cap and trade program, saying it would “kill jobs” in the U.S. and that he would “endeavor to convince” McCain to change his plans:

BECK: How would you address the cap and trade on the day when everyone’s paying attention to coal?

ROMNEY: Well as you know, there were a number of places in the primary campaign where I disagreed with John McCain, and his cap and trade proposal was one of them. … If you want to negotiate with someone and you feel it’s important to bring down global CO2 emissions then China has to be part of the picture. And if we go out there and put a burden on our own industry and they don’t put a burden on theirs, why you’ll just kill jobs here.

Listen here:

Both McCain and Obama support the development of carbon sequestration technologies; in fact, in the same interview conservatives are now hyperventilating over, Obama said, “This idea of no coal, I think, is an illusion.” What’s more, a green energy-based economy built through an aggressive cap-and-trade program would create millions of jobs and generate billions of dollars for investment into clean energy, as John McCain himself noted just six months ago:

As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy. … A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy. Those who want clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels will have their opportunity through a new market that rewards those and other innovations in clean energy.

It can’t be a good sign for McCain that one of his top surrogates has turned McCain’s own campaign lines back against him — on the day before the election, no less.

The right-wing, led by Drudge, is promoting criticisms of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) made by Iraq war vet Shawn Bryan. Calling Murtha “some fat little bastard,” Bryan — a Marine — asserted that Murtha’s efforts to reveal the cover-up of the Haditha massacres “betrayed” his service. But VetVoice’s RockRichard astutely notes that Bryan is getting worked up over comments that weren’t even directed at him. That’s because Bryan was not a member of the Marines who participated in the Haditha tragedy:

Shawn Bryan served in the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines in Iraq. That Battalion returned from Iraq in early October of 2005, over a month before the Haditha killings.

Moreover, VetVoice notes that some of Murtha’s harshest critics fail to appreciate that Murtha worked tirelessly in Congress to get more funding for better armor to protect the troops.

Harper’s Ken Silverstein reports today that former International Republican Institute (IRI) President Bruce McColm revealed to him that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), as chairman of the IRI board, directly supported funding for Professor Rashid Khalidi’s Center for Palestine Research and Studies in the early 1990s. McColm explained to Silverstein:

All our [grant] proposals had to be approved at board meetings with John McCain in attendance and in agreement. John did think highly of these grants. … Ironically, it was Khalidi’s academic background and his known coolness to the PLO that attracted our interest. How strange to see the McCain campaign use Khalidi as a “type of terrorist” with whom Obama hangs around.

Over the last week, the McCain campaign has attempted to smear Khalidi as a radical and link him to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).