McCain launches 'Time for Action' tour

Fresh off his biographical tour to reintroduce himself to voters, John McCain kicked off another tour today to show he is in touch with some of America's struggles and challenges.

His first stop: the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., one of the most important sites in the country's civil rights journey, where in 1965 voting rights marchers were savagely beaten. "Bloody Sunday" helped lead to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

In his speech, McCain reminded of the courage and cause of Martin Luther King Jr. and of John Lewis, who took the first blow of an Alabama state trooper's baton and who now is a Democratic congressman from Georgia.

"There must be no forgotten places in America, whether they have been ignored for long years by the sins of indifference and injustice, or have been left behind as the world grew smaller and more economically interdependent," McCain declared. "In America, we have always believed that if the day was a disappointment, we would win tomorrow. That’s what John Lewis believed when he marched across this bridge. That’s what he still believes; what he still fights to achieve: a better country than the one he inherited."

The presumptive Republican nominee also borrowed from Democratic front-runner Barack Obama's mantra of change, but with his own spin:

"My friends, Americans change things. We always have. We don’t hide from problems or mistakes or history. We change things and we make history. Hope in America is not based in delusion, but in the faith that everything is possible in America. The time for pandering and false promises is over. It is time for action. It is time for change; the right kind of change; change that trusts in the strength of free people and free markets; change that doesn’t return to policies that empower government to make our choices for us, but that works to ensure we have choices to make for ourselves. For we have always trusted Americans to build from the choices they make for themselves, a safer, stronger and more prosperous country than the one they inherited."

McCain also plans stops today in Gee's Bend, Ala., home to famous quilters whose works have been exhibited in museums acrosss the country, and in Thomasville, Ala., where he will highlight rural development and workforce development.