Borrowing a page from his opponent’s script, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a 26-year veteran of Congress, Thursday cast himself as an advocate of change in Washington that Americans of all political persuasions can embrace.
Citing his record of reaching across party aisles on issues ranging from campaign reform to trying to curb pork-barrel spending, McCain blended his plea for nonpartisanship with a jab at Barack Obama’s shorter tenure in Washington — pledging that if elected president, “I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again. My friends, I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not.”
McCain, a fairly pedestrian speaker in formal settings, had never been expected to match the charisma that Obama unfurled last week in Denver before a packed crowd of 84,000 in Mile High Stadium. But toward the end of his speech, as he implored delegates and Americans to stand up and fight with him — to fight “for what’s right for our country .. for our children’s future” — McCain brought the crowd in St. Paul to its feet. For a moment, it seemed as if he wouldn’t be upstaged rhetorically by the bravura debut of his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the night before.
While her performance as the first woman on a Republican national ticket threatened to overshadow McCain’s acceptance speech, it also left the GOP’s top gun free to reach out to the political middle where American elections are won.
He took full advantage of the opportunity and retold the familiar tale of his nearly six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam as a time of both torture and reflection that changed his outlook on life.
“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.”
Warming up to the task, McCain, who at age 72 is the oldest non-incumbent ever nominated for president by a major party, cast himself as the man to shake up Washington and drive the earmarkers and pork-barrelers from the temple.
“I’ve fought corruption, and it didn’t matter if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans. I’ve fought big spenders … who waste your money on things you neither need nor want, while you struggle to buy groceries, fill your gas tank and make your mortgage payment.”
McCain also played on familiar GOP themes of security and fighting terrorists, reminding voters that he supported the surge when others said it would cost him the election. “… I said I’d rather lose an election than see my country lose a war.”
As McCain left the stage, he left a Republican party that was not only united behind his candidacy but suddenly thrilled by it. That gives him at least a fighting chance to win that election in November that he said last spring he’d be willing to lose.
