Bush Denies Claim That He 'Would Have' Endorsed Obama Over McCain

The Bush camp is quickly pushing back on a British report Tuesday that claimed the former president had been so cold on John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008 that he even suggested he would have been willing to endorse Barack Obama instead.

"This is ridiculous and untrue," Bush spokesman David Sherzer told Politico. "President Bush proudly supported John McCain in the election and voted for him."

A report from the Financial Times Tuesday relayed a supposed 2008 meeting between British heads of state and Bush in the Oval Office during which they candidly discussed McCain's prospects for the upcoming election:

Not a chance. "I probably won't even vote for the guy," Bush told the group, according to two people present."I had to endorse him. But I'd have endorsed Obama if they'd asked me."

The report coincided with the release of Bush's "Decision Points," a publication that shed a fair degree of negative light on the relationship between the Republican president and his party's potential successor.

All 2000 campaign drama aside, Bush wrote about a "complex" relationship with McCain, and heavily criticized the GOP presidential candidate's decision to get involved with the administration's response to the banking crisis.