Call for change

McCain speaks to crowd of 20,000, distancing self from Bush, lambasting Washington insiders and Obama

Election 2008

Republican National Convention

McCain criticized Obama on taxes, energy, education and globalization. But he began by offering a grace note to Obama and his supporters, drawing a single shouted "boo" inside and the hall smattering of polite applause. "We'll go at it over the next two months," McCain said. "That's the nature of these contests, and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and my admiration."

Unlike McCain, who congratulated Obama in a TV ad on the night of the Invesco speech, Obama criticized his opponent yesterday morning. Republicans at the convention, he told reporters after touring a turbine plant in York, Pa., have "spent a lot of time talking about me, not in particularly truthful terms. But [they] haven't spent any time talking about the problems that ordinary Americans are going through every single day."

At 72, McCain is the oldest first-time presidential nominee in the country's history. His acceptance capped a convention on the bank of the Mississippi River that was jumbled by Hurricane Gustav's arrival on the Gulf Coast, which forced the GOP to cancel most of Monday's events here. Palin, 44, also made history yesterday when she was formally installed as the first woman on a Republican White House ticket.

The duo plans to campaign together for the next few days, starting today with a town hall session in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. They face a number of hurdles - a sagging economy, unpopular war, fatigue with the incumbent administration - that McCain says make them the underdog in the 60-day sprint to November.

It is not easy for a party to win three straight terms in the White House. But in distancing himself from the incumbent administration last night, and reaching out to independents and Democrats, McCain had to be careful not to upset those faithful who still hold Bush in high esteem. He navigated by directing his scorn not at the incumbent, but at a perennial target of both parties: nameless, faceless obstructionists inside the Beltway.

"Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd," McCain said. "Change is coming."

He also offered a brief but striking critique of his own party. "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us," McCain said, as the crowd was mostly silent. "We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption."