McCain promises: country first (UPDATED)
By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff
ST. PAUL -- Senator John McCain, returning to the themes that saved his once-flailing presidential quest, last night accepted the Republican nomination with a promise to shake up Washington with a bipartisan strategy and patriotic flair, warning political stalwarts that ‘‘change is coming.’’
``You know, I've been called a maverick, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum. Sometimes it's meant as a compliment and sometimes it's not," McCain told the closing session of the Republican National Convention. "What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you.''
Standing at the end of a runway -- a T-shaped stage shaped like a fashion catwalk -- McCain distanced himself from the less-popular members of his party, blaming unnamed Republicans for taking the party away from its core principles.
``We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger,'' McCain said, making an implicit reference to scandals involving former GOP House members and the huge government programs approved under President Bush.
``We're going to change that. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics,'' McCain said.
McCain spoke movingly about his years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and how it changed him from a selfish and brash young man to a mature ``servant'' of his country. ``I've never lived a day, in good times or in bad, that I don't thank God for that privilege,'' he said.
The Arizona senator's speech was interrupted several times by protesters, including a man wearing a T-shirt that said, ``Iraq Veterans Against the War,'' and waving a banner that read, ``You Can't Win a War With an Occupation.'' At least two members of an antiwar group called ``Code Pink'' were carried out by security officers, and the boisterous crowd drowned out any protest efforts with a deafening chant of ``USA! USA!''
McCain appeared unrattled by the demonstrations. ``My dear friends, please, please don't be diverted by the ground noise and the static,'' McCain said, drawing a chuckle from the crowd of approximately 25,000 who filled St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center hockey arena.
McCain paid polite homage to his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, telling him that ``you have my respect and my admiration.'' Keeping to his theme of reconciliation, McCain avoided the skewering of Obama earlier in the week by other GOP officials, including his new vice presidential pick, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
But McCain also pointedly laid out a vision of an Obama-led America that he said would include higher taxes, labor union-controlled education policy and a health care system run by ``bureaucrats.''
And while Obama captured the Democratic nomination with a message of change and bipartisan cooperation, McCain insisted he was the better man to accomplish those goals.
‘‘Again and again, I’ve worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed. That’s how I will govern as president. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again. I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not,’’ McCain said, underscoring an evolving GOP attack against Obama as a partisan as well as inexperienced lawmaker.
Palin also has limited political experience, having served as a council member and then mayor of a small town before becoming governor of the nation’s third least-populated state 20 months ago. Palin wowed the conventioneers Wednesday night with a speech that skewered Obama and underlined her ‘‘hockey mom’’ background.
McCain lauded Palin as a champion of the reforms he has promised to bring to the federal government.
‘‘I’m very proud to have introduced our next vice president to the country. But I can’t wait until I introduce her to Washington,'' McCain said with a mischievous grin on his face. ``And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: change is coming,’’ said McCain, a 26-year veteran of Washington politics.
McCain last night was faced with the task not only of making as vivid an impression as Obama but also of delivering an address that would provoke at least as much enthusiasm as Republicans showered on Palin Wednesday night.
McCain -- entering the stage in front a large screen with a huge, waving American flag that recalled a famous scene from the movie ``Patton,'' with George C. Scott playing the World War general -- won a less giddy, but equally approving response as he addressed the crowd. Some of the loudest applause erupted when McCain mentioned his unstinting support for the Iraq war as well as his own military experience.
‘‘I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people,’’ McCain 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.’’
The speech marked for McCain a milestone in a long and tortuous fight for the nomination. Virtually written off as a serious contender one year ago, the cash-strapped Arizona senator retooled his campaign, and worked to burnish his reputation as a maverick during his 22 years in the Senate and four in the House of Representatives.
‘‘He reverted to doing what he does best,’’ said Dan Schnur, a former GOP consultant who is now director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. ‘‘Everytime John McCain forgets to be a maverick, he gets in trouble. When his campaign was going bankrupt last summer, he finally decided an establishment campaign wasn’t doing any good.’’
But while McCain’s rogue reputation and independent message propelled him to victory in the GOP primaries, he continued to struggle to win over the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
McCain’s support of embryonic stem cell research and rejection of anti-gay marriage legislation angered social conservatives. His early support of an immigration reform package, infuriated immigration hard-liners. McCain’s authorship of a campaign finance reform package aggravated conservative activists who wanted to push their agendas without constraints.
But with an eye on the presidency, McCain began wooing the same social conservatives he once disparaged. In mid-2006, McCain spoke at Christian evangelical leader Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, despite having previously referred to Falwell as one of a group of ‘‘agents of intolerance.’’
Last year, McCain backed away from efforts to pass a bipartisan immigration package, saying he wanted to secure the borders before dealing with the estimated 12 million undocumented workers in the United States.
And McCain’s signature campaign finance legislation — known as ‘‘McCain-Feingold’’ for its chief sponsors — barely rates a mention on McCain’s presidential campaign website.
Conservatives were thrilled with McCain’s outreach to the right wing of his party by picking Palin as his running mate. The McCain campaign also hopes that Palin will appeal to swing voters in small-town America, and the duo will appear today in Cedarburg, Wis.
Palin’s selection may not be helpful in the long term, Schnur said, because her own lack of experience diminishes McCain’s ability to attack Obama on the same grounds. But she may help McCain satisfy the two electoral camps he needs to achieve victory in November.
Some GOP voters ‘‘might disagree with McCain on stem cell research and global warming,’’ Schnur said. ‘‘But seeing Sarah Palin on the stage makes them feel better about it.’’
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Did you guys see this yet? I hadn't seen it reported anywhere yet.
Opinion
Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
By Gloria Steinem
September 4, 2008
Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.
But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.
Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."
This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.
Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."
She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.
So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.
Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.
So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.
Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.
Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.
And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.
This could be huge.
Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.
I hope that change means less Republicans and not McCain and 'end times' Palin.
I'm surprised they didn't roll out the Bob Dylan song "The Times They Are A Changin'". I mean, they don't respect copyrights. Why doesn't the RIAA bust them like they do to teenagers.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A republican stopping partisan rancor..LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why don't you wait until the speech is done before you write this story? I'm still watching it live. What if something happened that went away from the written script? It's happened before.
Please, don't post stories before they happe based on what the GOP machine fed you ! For example,Mc Cain is reading from a podium and his speech is going as badly as it is possible. As of 10:20pm
Where is the journalistict ethic?
McCain has advertised his stupidity with his choice for running mate. While rational people like myself could care less about Bristol Palin's pregnancy, the religious right will undoubtedly be perturbed by it..Ironically, the group he was trying to reach out to with his choice for VP...If his decision making on such trivial matters is suspect, imagine the ramifications of his poor decision making on serious issues? I've always had the impression that McCain was way over the hill, and this only solidifies it..
Not hearing any substance...Wow, they don't have a platform! Can't wait for the debates. Values of families that if Palin ends up being the President given her current stance would be in opposition to 70-77% of US registered voters in a CBS poll from 2007 who want to keep abortion legal. I wonder if she would make her daughter, Bristol, or her other two daughters carry a child to term that was the result of rape. I am not willing to take that chance with my daughter. To me that is family values. Forcing a girl or woman to relive the horrendous act over and over again is deplorable and not family friendly. Ok, now some substance, but why were those jobs lost? Was it because the economy is spiraling downwards and the companies needed to cuts costs? Was it because the CEO's wanted to make more? I don't think it was Barack Obama who shipped those jobs overseas. My daughter's public school does answer to me, because I make the effort to get involved and stay involved not only at the school, but with my daughter's daily studies. Drill now? We won't see that for how many years? Um, 10. Boy, that will help today. How about mention of conservation? It's easy, patriotic & costs next to nothing. Not patriotic? Our parents or grandparents made sacrifices during WWII, so why can't we be asked & expected to do the same today??
All the people that respond to this article act just like congress. They cling to their partisan beliefs, which has gotten us nowhere. All of the candidates whether male or female, are people who are willing to serve this country, get skewered by the press, and drag their families and their reputations through public scrutiny. They should be commended, and thanked. All are owed our respect.
Judge them on their voting records and their stance on the issues. Not on whether they are perfect or not. We are all humans and uniquely flawed. Vote for people, not for political affiliations.
Anyone in this near-communist state wish to wager on the November outcome? I predict the same as 2004, with people in Cambridge breaking down & crying like 5-year olds. Shall I get more information so you can contact the French embassy for details on how to emmigrate? N'Obama will let you down even harder than Kerry did, buy extra kleenex now ladies.
Of course, in the unlikely event that your guy wins, I'll be the first to congratulate you and wish him luck - something Dems never do because they are elitist sore losers.
John Macbeth is a good and respectable man. Or he was, until he sold out sacred principles for the sake of overwhelming ambition. His selection of a partisan rottweiler and clueless wacko as running mate has damaged my respect for him. So did the RancorFest 2008 which he allowed to happen this week...a carnival of flamboyant smugness, backed up by a record of failure, neglect and malfeasance. I'll pay more taxes under Obama, and WITH A SMILE ON MY FACE, if it will keep these no-agenda-having losers away from power.
The differences now between Sarah Palin and Hilliary Clinton is starting to take its toll on the Clinton era.Since Friday when John Mccain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate the NEW ERA FOR WOMEN FOR THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY BEGAN.Women are now looking at the rising of the sun for women all around the country and around the world.THEY CAN BE MOTHERS AND LEADERS AT THE SAME TIME JUST LIKE MEN.ISN"T THAT SWEET FOR WOMEN especially in this country.Hilliary was a great women too but she never given the chance to proove to her Party and to the nation how great she can be a Vice President for the Democrat Party and America unlike Sarah Palin who gave that thundering Vice President speech last night to the audience nationwide she is now ahead of Hilliary Clinton in that regard.Remember this election was suppose to crown the Democrat Party with a woman ticket but the Chiefs not the Indians of the Democrat Party block her path to victory.The victor Barrack Obama honored the Chiefs closed the door to screaming women loyal to Hilliary Clinton and to any cause for women.The End.SARAH PALIN IS THE WOMENS HOPE THANKS TO JOHN S MCCAIN THE WOMENS HEROE.The hope for women of America is not dying it is still alive and well in SARAH PALIN AND JOHN MCCAIN THE MAVERICKS.
I love it when the Republican party calls themselves the Party of Lincoln. Look at the electoral maps after the Civil war and now. The southern states were predominately Democratic, while the northern states were mostly Republican.
If you were to look at the elections from the Civil Rights era to today, you'll find a lot of that has reversed--the south leans more to the red and the north to the blue.
The only protester who's banner I saw (he was wearing a T-shirt as well, and didn't appear to be saying anything at all) was a man exhibiting a 'McCain voted against vets' sign (I paraphrase). he was up in the rafters for a full minute or so, and I don't know how visible he was to the delegates.
OBAMA = BETRAYAL
Obama supporters are foolish to think that he will never betray them.
Obama was a close friend of Pastor Wright for TWENTY YEARS.
Obama threw Wright under the bus for personal ambition.
McCain would not betray his country even after 5 years of torture.
You can put lipstick on a traitor, but he's still a traitor.
Country First... what later?