McCain bids to steal the mantle of change from Barack Obama

Watched by the three women in his life - his 96-year-old mother, Roberta, his wife Cindy and his running mate, Sarah Palin - the Republican presidential candidate John McCain used his keynote convention speech to attempt to steal from his Democratic rival Barack Obama the message of change, promising to shake up Washington from the inside and restore the public's trust in the Republican party.

"Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: change is coming," he told the Republican faithful gathered in St Paul, Minnesota.

He promised to end the "constant partisan rancour" and bring both Democrats and Independents into his administration if he wins the election on November 4.

Distancing himself from the party of George Bush, the most unpopular president since Richard Nixon, he said he would "fight to restore the pride and principles" of the party. "We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire," he said. "The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics."

He received a five-minute standing ovation before the speech, but failed to set the convention alight in the way his running mate had the previous day. Some of the biggest cheers of the night came when he mentioned Palin's name - "I can't wait until I introduce her to Washington" - and when she joined him on stage at the end, as 200,000 balloons descended from the ceiling.

As so often before in this campaign, McCain fell back on his well-worn story of the five years he spent in a Hanoi jail after his US Navy plane crashed during a bombing raid in the Vietnam war. As the son of an admiral, he was offered the chance of early release before his fellow American prisoners. But he refused to accept preferential treatment.

His years in jail made into the patriot he remains today - "I was never the same again" - and the memories earned him four standing ovations, to chants of "USA, USA".

Unlike Palin, who had constantly attacked Obama during her speech on Wednesday, the McCain tactic was to remain above the fray, even saying he admired his rival for his historic achievement in being nominated by the Democrats. "Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other."

Joe Klein, the Time magazine political columnist, thought the "honourable, at times moving, and in some ways remarkable" acceptance speech felt a little flat "after the full-throttle bilge and vitriol of Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani the night before". Despite this, says Klein, it was "the first time I'd ever heard a presidential candidate admit his party's failure as comprehensively as McCain did tonight".

A New York Times editorial said the speech showed "chilling glimpses" of the "new John McCain", a man who can "talk loftily of bipartisanship while allowing his team to savage his opponent". The irony is that this is exactly how George W Bush (with the help of Karl Rove) beat McCain in 2000.

McCain and Palin will now hit the campaign trail with most polls showing him trailing Obama, but not by much. The next big date for McCain is his first TV debate with Obama on September 26 in Oxford, Mississippi. Palin will meet Joe Biden in a vice-presidential debate on October 2 in St Louis, Missouri.

FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 5, 2008