McCain promises change is coming
PRESIDENTIAL candidate John McCain used his war stories from Vietnam and the promise to fight for change to appeal to American voters yesterday.
But the leaden delivery of the 72-year-old was no match for the pyrotechnic display of his running-mate Sarah Palin.
Her electrifying performance on Wednesday was still the talk of the country last night as she joined McCain on stage to a rapturous reception at the close of the Republican Party convention in Minnesota.
“John has picked a reform-minded, hockey-mommin’, basketball shootin’, moose-huntin’, fly-fishin’, pistol-packing mother-of-five for vice-president,” his wife Cindy told thrilled delegates.
Signalling the start of the two-month race for the White House, McCain yesterday made an audacious bid to hijack Democrat Barack Obama’s message that he is the face of change.
“Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd – change is coming,” McCain boomed.
But he is not known for his oratory, and his workman-like address bore little of the stardust of his running mate the previous evening.
He spoke most movingly about his five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Delegates wept as he told how the experience changed him from a selfish, swaggering young man into a servant of the people after torturers broke him, and his American cell mates saved his life.
“Fight for what’s right for our country. Stand up, stand up. We’re Americans and we never give up,” McCain said in a more rousing close.
Palin’s speech caused a surge for the Republicans, bringing them level with the Democrats in the latest polls.
She has clearly been unleashed as the election attack dog, while McCain promotes himself as a bi-partisan fixer wooing swing voters.
Her attacks on Obama have already made an impact, prompting worried Democrats to raise more than £5million for party funds on Thursday alone, a one-day record.
And her speech accepting her party’s nomination for vice-president was watched by 37 million US TV viewers - more than the Oscars or the opening of the Olympics. A poll taken before McCain spoke yesterday showed each party is now supported by 42 per cent of Americans, with the rest undecided.
Obama had 50 per cent of the vote in the polls after he accepted his party’s nomination at the Democratic Convention in Denver, Colorado, last week.
But he brushed off Palin’s mocking portrayal of him as an inexperienced liberal with a Messiah complex.
“I’ve been called worse on the basketball court. It’s not that big of a deal,” he told 10,000 supporters sitting in a field in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
His latest speech, standing on a hillock, was quickly dubbed “the sermon on the mount”.
