US presidential election

McCain seizes change theme from rival

Article published on the 2008-09-05 Latest update 2008-09-05 09:38 TU

John McCain after his acceptance speech.
(Photo: Reuters)

Arizona Senator John McCain formally accepted the Republican Party nomination for president Wednesday night in a speech that emphasised his Vietnam war record, distanced himself from George W Bush’s administration and reached out to Democrats. Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd in St Paul, Minnesota, McCain promised to bring change to Washington.

Despite hailing from the party in power for the last eight years, McCain took up Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s campaign theme of change, repeatedly referring to his political record as a “maverick”. 

“Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: change is coming,", he declared.

President Bush was notably absent from the evening. Without naming Bush once, McCain thanked “the President” for leading the country “in those dark days” and for “keeping us safe from another attack”.

In contraast to the Democratic Convention, where Bush and Republican opponents were repeatedly criticised, and even to the first days of the Republican Convention, where Obama was singled out for criticism, McCain struck a bipartisan tone, saying he respected Obama’s followers, that they were all Americans.

The speech was interrupted once by several anti-war protestors from the group Code-Pink, who stood up holding signs that read “you can’t win an occupation”. They were shouted down by the crowd, which chanted “USA, USA”.

Playing on another of Obama’s themes, signs reading “peace” were handed out to delegates in the crowd, despite McCain's support for the invasion of Iraq.

Following a video recounting his story as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for five years, McCain walked out alone onto an austere stage, in sharp contrast to the elaborate backdrop to Obama’s acceptance speech last week.

“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s,” he 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.”

"After days of negative attacks -- and no mention of real proposals to fix our economy, get more people health care, or make America safer -- the party that brought you eight years of disastrous policies is asking for four more," Obama's running-mate Joe Biden said in a statement.