With Lieberman at helm, speakers rally to distance McCain from Bush
ST. PAUL - For eight years, John McCain stood apart from the Republican Party as a critic who relished playing the skunk at George W. Bush's GOP picnic.
Yesterday, the skunk took over the picnic.
Bush's party not only welcomed McCain as its nominee, but embraced him - and his heroic life story - as its inspiration, committing itself to putting a fresh, nonpartisan gloss on a Capitol it has dominated for the last eight years.
McCain's independence from Bush has been well known, but the extent to which the Republicans were willing to build their case around this year's nominee's distance from the man they nominated four and eight years ago was striking.
"Don't be fooled by some of those political statements and advertisements" linking McCain with Bush, declared the main featured speaker, the independent Democrat from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman. "God only made one John McCain and he is his own man."
Democrats have spoken at Republican conventions before - most notably the fiery Georgia Senator Zell Miller, who embraced Bush four years ago - but they've been there to attest to their full-throated conversion.
Lieberman didn't. Rather, he presented himself as a genuine independent who straddles the line between both parties, and is proud that McCain does, as well.
Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, made a direct appeal to people in his party to vote for McCain on the grounds that he's not a doctrinaire Republican. Some Republican delegates seemed more puzzled than fired up.
But others seemed to realize that this was going to be a different kind of convention.
In a compressed opening day, restructured after Hurricane Gustav laid waste to Monday's planned tribute to Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the GOP made quick work of the current administration. The president's speech from the White House ended before the convention went live on nationwide TV.
Instead, the first prime-time speech was by TV star and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, who used his trademark folksiness to tell the moving story of McCain's five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and to attest to McCain and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's skills as reformers.
"When they get to Washington, they're not going to care how much the alligators get irritated, they're going to drain that swamp," Thompson declared.
He also took some strong shots at Democratic standard-bearer Barack Obama, declaring that his nomination was "history-making, because he's the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for president."
It was a moment of partisan toughness, and the crowd relished it, but it was one of the few cutting attacks of the evening. Like the cool, light jazz that filled its musical interludes, yesterday's remade opening night was geared for easy listening.
Edgy speakers like former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani were redirected to different time slots. Even Bush refrained from taking on the Democrats in the style of past conventions.
And the most coveted speaking slot of all was given to someone who actually ran against Bush - Lieberman - who was there to portray the Democrats as being out of the mainstream.
He didn't really say that, though. Instead, he offered some back-handed praise for Obama as "a gifted and eloquent young man" who lacked the bipartisan spirit of none other than Bill Clinton, whom Lieberman lauded for reaching across the aisle to solve important problems like welfare reform.
Delegates may have scratched their heads over that one, but Lieberman was there to appeal to moderates watching on TV more than the conservatives in the hall.
But many of those viewers probably knew of Lieberman's torturous relationship with his party - how Democrats in Connecticut rejected his renomination, and how he won reelection as an independent with substantial GOP support.
The success of the convention's first night will largely be determined by what those TV viewers think of Lieberman's character, as much as McCain's.
After last night, many were probably asking themselves: Was Lieberman's endorsement based on bipartisanship - as he insists - or something more like payback?
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. 