Kerry hits McCain on shifting positions

Senator John F. Kerry acknowledged the crowd last night at the convention. (Yoon S. Byun/ Globe Staff)

DENVER - Predicting that Republican attacks, like those that felled his presidential candidacy four years ago, will backfire against Barack Obama, Senator John F. Kerry last night issued a blistering critique of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, a friend whom Kerry once sounded out about being his running mate.

Addressing the Democratic National Convention, Kerry linked McCain to President Bush's foreign policy, which the Massachusetts Democrat characterized as extremist, and offered the failure of his own candidacy as a map for Democrats to follow to defeat the GOP's politics of "fear and smear" and "distortion and division."

He also mocked McCain for shifting positions on issues as a candidate and vigorously defended Obama's patriotism.

"I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years," Kerry said. "But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let's compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.

"Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you're against it," evoking a Kerry comment about his position on bills to fund the Iraq war which Republicans used in 2004 to ridicule him as a flip-flopper.

McCain and the Republicans have zeroed in on Obama's foreign policy pronouncements to portray him as inexperienced and weak. But Kerry said the selection of a commander-in-chief is about "electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther, thought harder, and listened better."

He cited Obama's call for a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, which McCain labeled "cut and run" but which Bush and the Iraqi government now agree upon. He spoke of Obama's policy of talking to enemies of the United States, which McCain scoffed at. But now, in the case of Iran's nuclear program, "Bush's diplomats are doing exactly what Obama said: talking with Iran."

Kerry also fired a broadside at McCain on the conduct of his campaign.

"Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same Rove tactics and the same Rove staff to repeat the same old politics of smear and fear," Kerry said. "Well, not this year, not this time."

Kerry also drew a comparison between the attacks on his patriotism because he opposed the Vietnam War and those on Obama for his opposition to the war in Iraq.

"Years ago, when we protested a war, people would weigh in against us, saying, 'My country right or wrong,' " Kerry said. "Our answer? Absolutely, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right. When wrong, make it right. Sometimes loving your country demands you must tell the truth to power.

"This is one of those times, and Barack Obama is telling those truths," he said.