McCain's bipartisan appeal
By LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press
September 5, 2008
Page 2 of 2
McCain mostly refrained from the brass-knuckled rhetoric that marked Obama's speech exactly one week earlier.
Perhaps the Republican's sharpest hit came without even a mention of his Democratic rival.
"I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need," McCain mocked. "My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God."
McCain has cast Obama as a presumptuous candidate, and his campaign has likened the Democrat to a would-be messiah.
The Arizona senator also issued a warning "to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming." That, too, was an indirect Obama reference. McCain has suggested his Democratic rival puts personal ambition above the country.
In those comments, McCain left it to his audience to connect the dots.
McCain marched through a series of big issues �" defense, taxes, education, energy independence among them �" but without offering many specifics. Instead, there were generic promises to "make it better," of "rewarding hard work," and the like.
Certainly, McCain's speech wasn't as sharp as his vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's the night before �" or a host of other speakers who came before him. Their speeches were filled with biting attacks on Obama and his Democrats.
McCain, however, can't risk turning off undecided swing voters, many of whom recoil at negative campaigning.
Early on in his 50-minute address, protesters inside the hall interrupted McCain's address a few times, but on each occasion the crowd shouted them down with chants of "USA, USA." McCain himself was unfazed, telling the audience, "please don't be diverted by the ground noise and the static."
"Americans want us to stop yelling at each other," he added.
A former Vietnam prisoner of war, McCain pointed to his 5 1/2 years in captivity as a life-changing turning point.
"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said. "I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's."
In his unsuccessful presidential run eight years ago, McCain was considered the fresh-faced presidential hopeful bearing a message of bipartisanship and reform. But during this year's primary season, he watched Obama �" a first-term Illinois senator �" fill that role. Now, McCain is trying to reclaim the image at a time when voters are weary of partisan politics and sour on the status quo.
He was marking the pinnacle of his political life by delivering a speech in his preferred setting �" surrounded by people. In this case, they were the GOP convention delegates who granted him the nomination that eluded him in 2000.
On the convention's fourth and final night, McCain's campaign transformed the stage at the Xcel Energy Center to put him in a setting in which he typically performs best. He spoke from a podium at the end of a lighted catwalk extending into the crowd, hugged by the battleground delegations of Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and Minnesota. Behind where he was to stand, a hulking video screen displayed a breeze-blown flag.
Even so, speechmaking has never been McCain's strong point, and his delivery Thursday clearly paled next to that of his running mate or his Democratic rivals. Pausing after each idea, McCain's delivery seemed better suited to a speech in the Senate. Obama, Democratic No. 2 Joe Biden and Palin had been riveting; McCain was more laundry list.
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