McCain: 'Change is coming'
GOP presidential nominee vows to 'get country moving again'
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- John McCain, a POW turned political rebel, vowed Thursday night to vanquish the "constant partisan rancor" that grips Washington as he launched his fall campaign for the White House. "Change is coming," he promised the roaring Republican National Convention and a prime-time television audience.
To repeated cheers from his delegates, McCain criticized fellow Republicans as well as Democratic rival Barack Obama as he reached out to independents and disaffected Democrats.
(Charlie Neibergall/The Associated Press)
"We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us," he said of the Republicans who controlled Congress for most of the past 15 years.
As for Obama, he said, "I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it."
Before McCain's speech, the climax of the final night of the party convention, delegates awarded the vice presidential nomination to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the first female ticketmate in Republican history.
"She stands up for what's right and she doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down," McCain said of the woman who has faced intense scrutiny in the week since she was picked.
"And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming," McCain declared.
He and Palin were slated to depart St. Paul immediately after the Arizona senator's acceptance speech, bound for Wisconsin and an early start on the final weeks of the White House campaign.
McCain, at 72 bidding to become the oldest first-term president, drew a roar from the convention crowd when he walked out onto the stage lighted by a single spotlight. He was introduced by a video that dwelt heavily on his time spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and as a member of Congress, hailed for a "faithful unyielding love for America, country first."
"USA, USA, USA," chanted the crowd in the hall.
McCain faced a delicate assignment as he formally accepted his party's presidential nomination: presenting his credentials as a reformer willing to take on his own party and stressing his independence from an unpopular President George W. Bush -- all without breaking faith with his Republican base.
"I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again," McCain said in remarks prepared for his prime time address. "I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not," he said of his rival for the White House, Sen. Barack Obama.
Other Republicans were far more pointed in criticizing Obama from the convention podium.
In the race for the White House, "It's not about building a record, it's about having one," said former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. "It's not about talking pretty, it's about talking straight."
McCain invoked the five years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison. "I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said. "I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's."
Thousands of red, white and blue balloons nestled in netting above the convention floor, to be released on cue for the traditional celebratory convention finale.
The last night of the McCain-Palin convention also marked the end of an intensive stretch of politics with the potential to reshape the race. Democrats held their own convention last week in Denver, nominating Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as running mate for Obama, whose own acceptance speech drew an estimated 84,000 partisans to an outdoor football stadium.
The polls indicate a close race between McCain and Obama, at 47 a generation younger than his Republican opponent, with the outcome likely to be decided in scattered swing states in the industrial Midwest and the Southwest.
Ahead lie the traditional major checkpoints -- presidential and vice presidential debates, millions of dollars in ads -- but also the unscripted, spontaneous moments that can take on outsized importance in the race to pick a president.
The Arizona senator paid a brief visit to the Xcel center at mid-afternoon to check out a speaking podium remade overnight to capture the intimacy of a town-hall meeting that has become his trademark.
He was accompanied by his wife, Cindy, as well as two close allies, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat-turned-independent.
Cindy McCain recommended her husband to the nation. "If Americans want straight talk and the plain truth they should take a good close look at John McCain ... a man tested and true ... who's never wavered in his devotion to our country," she said in remarks delivered Thursday night. She called him "a man who's served in Washington without ever becoming a Washington insider."
Since being announced as McCain's running mate last week, Palin has faced storm of scrutiny, some of it relating to her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and her time as governor, but most involving her 17-year-old unmarried daughter who is pregnant.
For the most part, McCain's aides have kept Palin out of public sight while vociferously defending her readiness to become president. She emerged Wednesday night during prime time to deliver a smiling, sarcastic attack on Obama that generated roars of approval -- and acceptance -- from the delegates.
She followed up in the hours before McCain's convention appearance with a meeting with Republican governors and a fundraising appeal that blamed Democrats for spreading "misinformation and flat-out lies" about her family and her.
Obama, campaigning in swing-state Pennsylvania on Thursday, said he wasn't surprised at Palin's criticism of him, and said Democrats intended to focus on her record.
"I think she's got a compelling story, but I assume she wants to be treated the same way that guys want to be treated," he said. "I've been through this 19 months, she's been through it -- what -- four days so far?"
Obama's campaign announced it had raised roughly $10 million from more than 130,000 donors since Palin delivered her speech Wednesday night.
