McCain to try to claim mantle of change
By LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press
June 3, 2008
Page 2 of 2
Still, McCain faces hurdles as he tries to market himself as a change-agent given that he's seeking to succeed an unpopular fellow Republican. While McCain and Bush differ on some policies, both are on the same page on Iraq and on the cornerstone of the current economic policy -- extending the president's tax cuts.
McCain's time in Washington presents another challenge. He has served in Congress since winning a House seat in 1982; he was first elected to the Senate in 1986.
Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004 after serving in the Illinois Legislature since 1996.
Against McCain's voluminous record, Obama's Senate record is thin.
Still, he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that would expand U.S. cooperation to destroy conventional weapons and that would create a database of information on federal spending. And in Illinois, he successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation and helped pass an overhaul of the state's troubled death penalty system.
During the primaries, Obama won over legions of voters with his pitch about a bipartisan type of politics to change Washington, while Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, was less successful in her attempts to use experience to counter his pitch.
McCain may have more luck.
An AP-Yahoo News study found that as of April, people who favor a Washington outsider who will change the way things are done split about evenly between McCain and Obama, while those who favor someone with Washington experience slightly favor McCain. However, those who are optimistic that things can actually be changed in Washington favor Obama over McCain by a large margin (43 percent to 31 percent), while those who are pessimistic over whether Washington can change favor McCain over Obama by an even wider margin (43 percent to 23 percent).
''Obama brings some assets to the table that immediately define him as a change agent: He doesn't look like a traditional candidate, he doesn't sound like a traditional candidate,'' said Erik Smith, a former aide to Democrat Dick Gephardt.
Countered Kevin Madden, a former aide to Republican Mitt Romney: ''There is a canyon between Barack Obama's rhetoric of change and what he's ever achieved, whereas John McCain can point to a long record of accomplishment and having led the charge of reform-minded change.
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AP Director of Surveys Trevor Tompson and Associated Press writer Erik Schelzig in Nashville, Tenn., contributed to this report.
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