ST. PAUL - The names at the top of the ballot on Nov. 4 will be McCain and Obama, but the juicier battle this fall for an important group of swing voters - white working women with children - may be fought between the other two stars of the Republican and Democratic conventions, Sarah Palin and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska and Mr. McCain's running mate, gave the best speech of her party's convention on Wednesday night, drawing 37 million television viewers. And she made it clear that she aimed to win over undecided women voters with her own version of the history-making, "I'm one of you" message that Mrs. Clinton employed to great effect in her fight for the Democratic nomination.

Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, has a legacy to protect: She has no intention of turning over her "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling," as she called her supporters, to Ms. Palin, a social conservative whose policy positions are poison in Hillaryland. What is more, Mrs. Clinton wants to be the one to make history as the first woman to win at the top of a presidential ticket, be it in 2012 or 2016.

The question is, will Mrs. Clinton fight Ms. Palin to help her former rival, Mr. Obama? Clinton advisers say that Mrs. Clinton wants to do everything she can to elect Mr. Obama, so that she cannot be blamed if he loses - yet she also does not want to be too closely associated with him if he does lose, nor to tarnish her own image by taking on a rookie national politician like Ms. Palin and possibly coming up short.

Mrs. Clinton is heading to Florida on Monday to campaign for Mr. Obama. And while his advisers expect her to serve as a counterweight to the McCain-Palin ticket, Clinton advisers are emphatic that Mrs. Clinton does not plan to attack Ms. Palin. Whether that remains the case through the fall is an open question, especially if Ms. Palin starts doing as well with, say, women who watch "The View" as Mrs. Clinton did.

Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Palin have little in common beyond their breakout performances at the conventions and the soap opera aspects of their family lives. Mrs. Clinton always faces high expectations; Ms. Palin faced low expectations this week, and benefited from them. Mrs. Clinton can seem harsh when she goes on the attack; Ms. Palin has shown a knack for attacking without seeming nasty. Mrs. Clinton has a lot of experience; Ms. Palin, not so much. Mrs. Clinton is pantsuits; Ms. Palin is skirts.

Some Republican delegates in St. Paul saw starker differences.

"Sarah's smile is sincere, which I never felt from Hillary, who has anger and resentment in her eyes," said Ann Schmuecker, a delegate from Mountain Home, Arkansas, where she met the Clintons decades ago.

Friends of Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, say she is the Obama campaign's greatest weapon in pointing out Democrats' differences with Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain.

"With two Supreme Court vacancies likely in the next four years, Senator Clinton will remind women it is not in their interests to allow Governor Palin to be one heartbeat from the presidency," said Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Clinton and a long-time friend of Mrs. Clinton.

If the election remains close, the next president could very well be picked by what Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist, calls "Wal-Mart Moms" - white working women with children living in the exurbs and in rural parts of battleground states, who may make up a swing sliver of the electorate.

"The real issue is whether soft Democrats and soft Republicans with a similar demographic profile, like white working women, will vote their economic self-interest and support Obama or whether McCain-Palin will be able to scare them away," said Mr. Lehane, who was an adviser on the Gore campaign in 2000.

"In this context, Hillary and the former president are critical players, as they are a small sub-set of Democrats who can walk into a kitchen in Parma, Ohio, or Macomb County, Michigan, and instantaneously connect with those very kind of voters," he added.

At the same time, it may be against Mr. Obama's interests to turn the election into a proxy fight between Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Palin. Obama v. McCain may be more favorable turf; Mr. Obama does not want to get bogged down fighting a vice-presidential candidate, or rely too much on Mrs. Clinton carrying his water.

White female independents once disliked Mrs. Clinton, largely for cultural reasons, though many came to see her as an ally on their issues or admire her as a fighter. Ms. Palin might well end up emerging as an appealing heroine to these voters; the Obama campaign has no way of knowing right now. There is no evidence yet that Ms. Palin could deliver blocs of voters to Mr. McCain, so there is no incentive right now for Mr. Obama to want a Clinton-Palin slugfest to influence the electoral outcome.

Mike McCurry, who was press secretary to the 1988 Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Lloyd Bentsen, noted that the two men at the top of the ticket have by far the greatest power to direct the race.

"Aside from the vice-presidential debate and the ability of running mates to make a splash in select media markets, no one but Obama and McCain have control of the national storylines in the presidential race," said Mr. McCurry, who was also a press secretary in the Clinton White House.

How much Mrs. Clinton wants to help Mr. Obama is another matter. Some of her aides note with a hint of resentment that Mr. Obama did not pick her as his running mate; he did not even vet her fully. Plus, they add, her fall calendar also includes campaigning for Senate Democratic candidates, not just for Mr. Obama.

Indeed, some Republicans in St. Paul predicted that Mrs. Clinton might not turn out to be "the great asset" that Obama advisers like to call her.

"Let me tell you something," said Luanne Van Werven, a Republican delegate from Lynden, Wash., as the convention closed late Thursday night. "I secretly think Hillary loves Sarah Palin."

Why?

"Because she wants Barack to lose, so she can run again, of course!" Ms. Van Werven said with a laugh. "I just bet Hillary was watching Sarah's speech on T.V. Wednesday night and cheering, 'You go, girl!' "

By Patrick Healy, The New York Times, September 5, 2008

So per my last post, Gov. Sarah Palin deserves support from women, conservative and liberal alike, when she is treated in a sexist manner. But women should also feel free to express differences of opinion with her. What troubles me about Palin's speech on Wednesday night is her charm, high voice, and soft manner belie the depth of her arch-conservative and some would say anachronistic views on abortion rights, abstinence-only sex education, church and state, animal slaughter for pleasure, and the environment.

Her views on these topics are hardly in line with the views of most American women. An Emily's List poll conducted Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 shows, "a 55 percent majority of Clinton's voters say that Palin's inclusion on the ticket makes them less likely to vote for John McCain (just 9 percent say her presence on the ticket makes them more likely to support McCain)."

Sen. Hillary Clinton won 18 million votes, so 9 percent of that is more than 1.5 million votes. In a close election, if in the right states, those votes could turn out to be decisive. The website electoral-vote.com cites a new CNN poll showing Ohio (with its 20 electoral college votes) in a statistical dead heat, with Obama leading 47 percent to 45 percent. The website also tallies the electoral college votes, based on recent polls, with Obama winning 298 votes, McCain 227 and showing them tied in Virginia, which has 13 electoral votes. If those former Clinton, now likely Palin/McCain supporters are strategically placed in states where the race is tied or states now polling barely for Obama (including Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire) and those states' 41 electoral votes tip into the McCain camp, that boosts McCain electoral support to 268, just two shy of the 270 needed to win the White House. This is an unlikely scenario, but one worth watching.




By Bonnie Erbe, U.S.News & World Report, September 4, 2008

Sandy Goodman was deeply disappointed when Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't get the Democratic nomination, then again when she was bypassed for the VP spot. So Goodman, a longtime Florida Democrat, flirted with thoughts of shunning Barack Obama, and perhaps even voting Republican.

Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, and suddenly things became clear to Goodman: The Republicans had no place for her.

"Boy, you are sure not talking to ME!" Goodman, 61, says she thought when she heard Palin's views on issues like abortion rights. Now, Goodman is volunteering for Obama.

But then there's Chrissie Peters. The 37-year-old librarian from Bristol, Tenn. has always voted Democratic and supported Clinton. She assumed she'd vote for Obama - until she saw Palin speak. Now she's voting Republican.

"She was so down-to-earth, a regular person," says Peters. "She hasn't been in politics her whole life, so she isn't jaded or tainted. And I love that she's a mom. Yes, I disagree with some of her positions, but that's what this country is about."

One of the most intriguing questions about the Alaska governor's sudden arrival on the national scene has been what impact it'll have on women voters - especially those who supported Clinton.

Palin made an overture to those voters in her first speech after being chosen by McCain.

Will the pitch work?

Evidence so far shows that Palin is not drawing a lot of support from voters outside the Republican base.

An ABC News poll released Friday found the selection of Palin makes people likelier to vote for McCain by just 6 percentage points - half the 12-point margin by which Sen. Joe Biden makes them more likely to support Obama.

And as for Clinton supporters, eight in 10 said they'd vote for Obama in November, according to a Gallup Poll conducted last weekend after McCain announced his selection of Palin.

Diane Mantouvalos, for one, thinks the numbers are behind the tide.

"We've always been a few weeks ahead of the polls," says the founder of the JustSayNoDeal Web site, a clearinghouse for groups of disaffected Clinton supporters seeking to punish the Democratic Party and Obama for what they see as inexcusable treatment of Clinton.

Mantouvalos hasn't decided whom she'll support in November. But she believes many former Clinton supporters will end up voting for McCain. And she thinks Palin will help make that happen.

"I was there," Mantouvalos says of Palin's convention speech. "I was blown away. She seemed so confident in her own skin."

And what about all the issues on which Palin differs so sharply from Clinton? "Principle trumps issues for this group," she says of her and others like her.

To Gloria Steinem, the nation's most recognizable feminist, that logic is mystifying.

"Selecting Sarah Palin ... is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters," Steinem wrote this week in the Los Angeles Times, arguing that McCain's running mate is seriously underqualified. "Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton."

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, Steinem added: "I have yet to meet one single human being who was for Hillary and is now for McCain, with or without Palin, but some must exist somewhere."

Historically, women vote on the issues, not by the gender of the candidate, and since 1980 they've trended Democratic for that reason, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

"I wouldn't expect that the McCain-Palin ticket will pull in Clinton supporters," says Walsh. "They were supporting her on the issues. Her gender just added to the appeal."

Whatever appeal gender has for female voters, Obama's campaign is not about to let McCain corner the market. Clinton herself, along with Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, all are scheduled to campaign for Obama in the coming weeks, particularly where they can vouch for Obama to large female audiences

The Washington group EMILY's List, which backs female candidates who support abortion rights, says its own polling shows that a majority of Clinton supporters - 55 percent - say Palin's presence on the ticket makes them even less likely to vote McCain. Only 9 percent say it makes that more likely.

"There really couldn't be more of a distance between Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton on the issues and the agenda that Clinton fought so passionately for," the group's executive director, Ellen Moran, said in an interview. "The more (Clinton supporters) are learning about Palin, the more they are coming to the Obama-Biden ticket."

That's not the case for self-described "Clinton die-hard" Amy Goldman. The consultant from Edgewater, N.J. says she'd been leaning toward McCain for a while, but his pick of Palin sealed the deal.

"His pick goes outside the box," said Goldman, 52, who like Mantouvalos is involved in the Internet-based efforts to challenge the Democratic party. "I'm not being bitter by voting this way. I really think they're a great ticket."

Liz Hunter won't go that far. The 25-year-old Clinton fan is deeply conflicted. She's not ready to support Obama, but doesn't think she could seriously vote Republican. She read Palin's speech online, so she could pay attention to the details. "Sometimes on TV, you get caught up with all the applause," she says.

"I really respect the fact that she has five children and a career, and keeps her family strong," said Hunter. But at the same time, "I just don't think I could go over to that side." The debates will decide it, she says.

For Goodman, the Florida voter who's shifted to Obama, there will be no such indecision. She'll work to convince fellow Clintonites that they shouldn't be swayed by the woman on the Republican ticket.

"I was insulted when she referred to Hillary and the 18 million cracks in the ceiling," Goodman says, referring to Clinton's line that her primary votes put that many cracks in the glass ceiling that has held women back. "I don't believe Hillary was making those 18 million cracks for Sarah Palin."

By JOCELYN NOVECK, The Associated Press, September 6, 2008

Look out, Sarah Barracuda. Here comes the Queen of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit.3

Hillary Clinton will fly Monday to Florida to campaign for Barack Obama - her first such swing since the two parties held their conventions and John McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate to win onetime Clinton backers to his side.

While Obama and Clinton sources insist the trip to Tampa and Kissimmee has been planned for a while, the strategy will reinforce to her supporters - women in particular - that Palin is no Hillary Clinton.

Clinton is unhappy with Republicans trying to sell her fans on the conservative Republican Alaska governor as an alternative, an insider said.

Part of Palin's appeal to McCain was the chance to peel away Clinton supporters who were disappointed that she got neither the Democratic presidential nor vice presidential nominations. Palin is the first woman on a Republican national ticket.

"Other trips are already in the planning stages through Election Day," said Kathleen Strand, a Clinton spokeswoman.

Former President Bill Clinton will also hit the campaign trail in coming weeks, but his main mission will be persuading white blue-collar and rural men that Obama is their best hope to revitalize the economy, a campaign source confirmed.

Hillary Clinton has already campaigned for Obama in Florida, as well as New Mexico and Nevada, two other important battleground states this election, her spokeswoman said.

By KENNETH R. BAZINET, New York DAILY NEWS, September 5th 2008

Watching Gov. Sarah Palin explode onto the national scene over the last week got me thinking back to a cold evening earlier this year, just before the New Hampshire primary. I was half-listening to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton speak at an auditorium when a strange noise interrupted the event: two young men shouting, in muffled voices, "Iron my shirt!"

At first, Clinton seemed as taken aback as the rest of the audience, unsure of what was going on. Then she saw the yellow "Iron My Shirt!" sign one of the young men held, figured out what was being shouted and brushed the interruption aside. "Ah, the remnants of sexism, alive and well," she said, then continued with her remarks. When security officers removed the young men from the audience, I joined several other reporters in following them outside to find out who the hecklers were and what had motivated them to make such a spectacle.

Little did we know that the bizarre incident was a precursor of what was to come -- of the debate over sexism, feminism and the role of women in public life that would emerge as one of the defining aspects of the 2008 campaign. My fellow reporters and I never really did resolve the mystery of the "iron my shirt" episode; the two young men refused to give us their names and offered strangely vague reasons for being there. But we were put on notice that night: Gender politics was going to be a part of this race in ways that no one could foresee.

After following Clinton on the campaign trail for more than two years, I have been watching the Palin story with some wariness -- especially the conservative charges that the treatment she's received has been overwhelmingly sexist. With each new development, I keep wondering: What if?

What if, back in the 1990s, Clinton had announced the pregnancy of an unmarried, teenaged daughter? Would the Republicans have declared it an off-limits family matter and declined to judge her, or would it have turned into a national scandal that hurt her chances as she decided to pursue her own career in elected office?

What if, instead of the GOP's new vice presidential candidate, Clinton had been the one to run for national office without any international experience to speak of? (After all, Clinton's rivals diminished the relevance of her eight years as first lady, saying they counted for little on her resume.)

And what if Clinton had rejected questions about her record by calling such lines of questioning sexist? What if she had refused to name any national security decisions she had made, as a spokesman for Sen. John McCain did on Palin's behalf last week, on the grounds that the question was unfair?

What if, simply, the roles had been reversed?

Howard Wolfson, Clinton's former communications director, said he is confident that the Republicans "would have attempted to destroy her" if she were in Palin's shoes -- as, in fact, some Republicans tried to do to Clinton throughout the 1990s, and were preparing to do again if she had won the Democratic nomination this year.

At the same time, Wolfson said, Republican attempts "to defend Palin from sexism lost a fair amount of credibility when Carly Fiorina refused to acknowledge that her party had ever been sexist toward Hillary Clinton." (Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief turned McCain economic adviser, told a "hear-me-roar" press conference with other Republican women Wednesday that Republicans were not responsible for any mistreatment of Clinton.) I have had my share of major disagreements with Wolfson over the last few years, but on this one, he is probably right.

It may seem a pretty pointless exercise -- envisioning the "would haves" if Clinton and Palin had somehow swapped roles, parties and lives. But it is a useful tool as a reporter, a way of contemplating what is fair game now by comparing it with what was fair game then. Even the issue of "Would you ask a man the same question" (raised so indignantly last week by senior McCain adviser Steve Schmidt and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani) falls slightly short, simply because there are so few templates for female candidates running for higher office -- and the ones who have, including Clinton, Palin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have tried to use their roles as mothers and women as part of the overall package in ways that men do not.

That is not to say that every awkward detail of Palin's personal life is an acceptable target -- or that Democrats, reporters and bloggers ought to pursue Palin in all of the aggressive ways that Clinton has been grilled for most of her political life. It is also not to suggest that Clinton always openly answered questions about her own record or did not manipulate her femininity to her advantage when it suited her political needs.

And the sort of media-bashing that thrilled the GOP faithful last week may not play as well with the independents McCain hopes to win over. In an overnight ABC News poll taken before McCain's speech Thursday, 50 percent of respondents said that the media has treated Palin fairly, while 40 percent said it had not -- and among those who faulted the coverage, more saw political bias as the root cause than blamed sexism.

Still, in her first week on the national stage, Palin and her surrogates have brandished the sexism charge more unabashedly than Clinton has over the course of two very public decades. And Palin has not yet even faced serious questioning in person, in an interview or in a one-on-one debate. If Clinton's message was that she was a survivor -- that she had been vetted and tested, her viewpoints scrutinized, with all of her personal problems known to the country -- Palin's has so far been that she has, by virtue of being nominated, already passed every test that Clinton took. Palin's mantra, it seems, is that women no longer need to surpass men in their achievements and qualifications in order to win; they simply need to object when the question of their preparedness is raised.

And that makes me wonder: What would Clinton say to that?

Clinton has been surprisingly quiet in the days since Palin was nominated. She issued a bland statement the day McCain announced his surprise pick: "We should all be proud of Governor Sarah Palin's historic nomination, and I congratulate her and Senator McCain. While their policies would take America in the wrong direction, Governor Palin will add an important new voice to the debate." Last Thursday, Clinton put out just her second statement about Palin, saying she wanted to "slightly amend" one of her best zingers in Denver: "No way, no how, no McCain-Palin." And while Clinton is scheduled to stump in central Florida Monday on Sen. Barack Obama's behalf, the trip is not, according to people in both Democrats' camps, designed as a direct response to the debut of the second female vice presidential nominee in U.S. history.

It doesn't exactly add up to a resounding attack, especially during the heat of the campaign. Former Clinton advisers offer various explanations: She would only energize the Republican base if she criticized Palin; she doesn't want to diminish her own stature by attacking McCain's rookie understudy rather than McCain himself; she is not on the ticket, so why should she intervene? Still, the result is a strange silence from the woman who, until just two weeks ago, had arguably the most powerful female voice in American politics.

Palin, on the other hand, has invoked Clinton several times, welcoming the senator's voters to her own effort to shatter the glass ceiling that Clinton "put 18 million cracks in." And yet America's two most famous female politicians were not always so simpatico. As recently as the primary season, Palin said that she was sorry she could not vote for Clinton (presumably because she was a registered Republican) but added that she regretted Clinton's "whining" about sexist treatment toward the end of her 2008 bid. "When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism, or maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, 'Man, that doesn't do us any good, women in politics, or women in general, trying to progress in this country,' " Palin said.

"I think that's reality, and I think it's a given, I think people can just accept that she is going to be under that sharper microscope," Palin went on. "So be it. I mean, work harder, prove yourself to an even greater degree that you're capable, that you're going to be the best candidate. . . ."

One senior Clinton adviser I talked to this past week called it understandable that the Alaska governor felt that way -- until she got into the white-hot glare herself. Another said that it is probably easier for Palin to take on the role of vice presidential nominee, and to push back against the questions that truly are offensive, because the path has been paved for the last several years by Clinton.

In some respects, the Clinton loyalists are sympathetic toward Palin and about the hardships she will face in largely uncharted territory as a woman running for national office. They lived through the excruciating moments of unfairness that Clinton endured during the campaign -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews's saying that Clinton won her Senate seat only because of her husband's infidelity is one particular favorite -- and some are still smarting from Obama's decision to tap Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. That may very well not have been a sexist choice, but from a certain angle, it could be seen to have carried a tinge of old-boy networking -- the kind that Palin said in her acceptance speech she had busted up in Alaska.

Which is why so many Clinton loyalists believe -- and I believe they really believe it -- that Palin could help McCain draw some voters from the Clinton base. The GOP may have its work cut out for it here: According to the ABC poll, 47 percent of women view Palin favorably. (She does better among men, who are more apt to be Republicans; 54 percent of men viewed her positively.) Still, the fact that a spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid used the word "shrill" to describe Palin's speech on Wednesday night only made Clinton's camp more convinced that the hockey mom from Wasilla really could win some women over. And that is why Palin's emergence has given the increasingly tight 2008 campaign a kind of symmetry that the "Iron My Shirt" boys, whoever they were, could never have imagined.

By Anne E. Kornblut, The Washington Post, September 7, 2008

ST. PAUL - The Sunday morning political programs will be jammed with candidates this weekend. Flip through the channels and see them all - Senators Barack Obama, John McCain, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Only one name, it seemed, was missing from the scheduled lineup: Gov. Sarah Palin, Mr. McCain's unexpected running mate.

While Ms. Palin spent Friday greeting large, enthused crowds in the Midwest, chatting up families eating ice cream and shaking hands with police officers, she held no news conferences before the crew of reporters who are already trailing her, step by step, along her political journey.

For the moment, Ms. Palin, in her first term as governor of Alaska, has been elusive when it comes to many reporters' inquiries.

"Governor Palin will be focused on speaking directly to the American people about why she and John McCain will fix Washington," an aide to Ms. Palin said, adding that Ms. Palin has been interviewed by radio and newspaper reporters from Alaska.

Even during her weeklong introduction to the nation at the Republican National Convention here (where she was, undeniably, the story of the convention), Ms. Palin was awfully hard to find.

For all that people here were discussing her, her spunk, her political experience, her family life, Ms. Palin rarely emerged again in public, aside from her nationally televised speech, an obligatory appearance on stage with Senator McCain after his speech and some fleeting sightings.

Ms. Palin's transformation could hardly have been more abrupt. Until this month she had tooled around her hometown in Alaska at the wheel of her own car. Now she was seen on the convention's final day being whisked away in the back of a sport-utility vehicle, huddled beside a political adviser, surrounded by grim-faced Secret Service agents and trailed by a paparazzilike clump of news photographers desperate for any glimpse of her, even through a darkened car window.

Ms. Palin stayed out of view for much of convention, her aides said, simply because she was busy. Busy preparing to give the biggest speech of her life. And then busy, they said, holding a handful of private meetings; they named five such visits here - with Cindy McCain and Laura Bush; Phyllis Schlafly; Alaska's delegation; leaders of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; and a small group of governors, most of whom said they already knew her.

A sampling of state party chairmen and top fund-raisers said they had not met with Ms. Palin in the passing days, as some might have expected. Still, among the Republican chairmen here, no one seemed to mind in the least.

"With a national scene that she's pretty new to, she has a lot of other things to do than to meet people like me," said Erik Iverson, the chairman of the Montana Republican Party, who (like so many other state chairmen here) said he felt certain he would be seeing Ms. Palin campaigning in his state within the month.

"This is the first time we have heard a presidential candidate or a vice-presidential candidate even talk about what it's like to live in rural America, and believe me, they were listening," Mr. Iverson said. "All over the Western United States, there were a lot of heads nodding."

Dick Wadhams, the Colorado Republican Party chairman, who said he had not met with Ms. Palin here either, said she had nonetheless already had an effect on his efforts; local offices in his state had an uptick, he said, in volunteers and donations.

Along these streets, there were also hard-sought, uncertain spottings of the rest of the Palin family, who had captured so much notice here. (Was that one of her daughters in downtown St. Paul?)

At a Republican women's luncheon, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico noted that she had seen Todd Palin, the governor's husband (who was himself introduced, a tad confusingly, as the "future first second man"), introduce Mrs. McCain to the room, and tease that if he had "a crystal ball" a few years back, he might have asked a few more questions when Ms. Palin decided to join the PTA.

At the Museum of Russian Art in South Minneapolis on Thursday, about seven governors, mainly from the West and Midwest, entertained Mitt Romney, the former presidential candidate and onetime vice-presidential contender, as their luncheon speaker before Ms. Palin appeared - a late addition to the meeting and the reason, at least one of the governors confided, that he had changed his plans and turned up for the lunch.

Some of the governors who had met Ms. Palin at official functions in the past two years, her time as governor, said they were eager to see how she was doing given the sudden tornado of attention (the covers of People and Us Weekly magazines, for starters) and the intense political coaching she was expected to undergo as she sets forth on a national campaign.

"With all this kind of frenetic activity, she seemed very poised and calm - the same person she was before," said Gov. John Hoeven of North Dakota, one of those who attended the art museum lunch.

In fact, said Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, Ms. Palin actually seems to be thriving in the spotlight. "She is enjoying the moment, it's very, very clear," Mr. Heineman said. "She relishes the challenge, and you can feel it. She said that even her kids are enjoying this convention, and she told us how the kids were saying things like, 'Oh my gosh, there's a senator I've seen on TV before.' "

Mostly, Ms. Palin avoided questions during the convention from the news media.

After the governors' lunch in Minnesota on Thursday, a restricted pool of news media representatives listened as she introduced herself once more and spoke of her plans.

"I have a big job cut out for me, running for vice president, and I intend to give this campaign all that I have to give," Ms. Palin said. "And I look forward to these 60-plus days on the trail. My family looks forward to it. We're excited about it. I look forward to every day in front of us. One of our missions is to bring the experience and the knowledge of a chief executive to the issues in this campaign."

Ms. Palin did not respond to reporters who shouted questions. But she made a single exception when an Alaskan television reporter posed a concern: Are you going to still be there for Alaska?

"I'm happy to be governor of Alaska," Ms. Palin said, adding, "couldn't be more proud, of course, of my position as governor of Alaska."

By Monica Davey, The New York Times, September 5, 2008

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. - Fresh off back-to-back conventions, the two presidential campaigns took off Friday on a 60-day dash to the White House in a political landscape reshaped by the candidacy of Gov. Sarah Palin and Republican efforts to seize the mantle of change.

The race, transformed by zeal among the Republican base for Senator John McCain's running mate, got a burst of new life at the same time that television viewership numbers showed that nearly 40 million people, a record for an American political convention, tuned to the major broadcast and cable-news networks to watch Mr. McCain's acceptance speech in St. Paul on Thursday night. That was a bit more than those who watched Senator Barack Obama's speech in Denver last week.

"Change is coming, change is coming, and with her there we will restore our strength and the prosperity of this great nation," Mr. McCain, with Ms. Palin at his side, told a roaring crowd of thousands in Cedarburg, Wis., a small town in a solidly Republican swath outside Milwaukee.

An even larger and more raucous crowd, highly unusual for Mr. McCain, jammed an outdoor amphitheater at a rally in Sterling Heights, near Detroit, here in one of this year's most crucial battleground states. Ms. Palin was greeted like an international celebrity as rock music blared and the crowd chanted: "Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!"

The first day of campaigning after the conventions suggested the contours of the two months ahead: the Obama campaign will use the deteriorating economy to try to link Mr. McCain to President Bush's economic policies, and Ms. Palin will be deployed to rally the Republican base as the main weapon against Mr. Obama.

Mr. McCain stayed away from negative attacks on Friday. But in a clear dig at Mr. Obama, Ms. Palin told the throng in Sterling Heights: "In politics there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are some candidates like John McCain who use their careers to promote change."

Mr. Obama's advisers scoffed at the pageantry and Mr. McCain's embrace of the "change" theme.

"Simply saying the word does not make you the agent of change," said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama's top political strategist.

They also said Mr. McCain had failed to address voters' fundamental concerns about the economy. Mr. Obama himself drew sharp distinctions between himself and his Republican rivals as he seized upon Friday's news that the nation lost more than 80,000 jobs last month.

Addressing an audience of workers at a glass manufacturing plant in Duryea, Pa., near Scranton, Mr. Obama said, "If you watched the Republican National Convention over the last three days, you wouldn't know that we have the highest unemployment rate in five years, because they didn't say a thing about what is going on with the middle class."

Mr. Obama, in shirtsleeves and wearing safety goggles, struck a sober tone about the economy as he toured the plant. The backdrop was intended to offer a contrast to the scenes of rallying this week in St. Paul, where, Democrats said, Republicans all but ignored an economic crisis facing many families across America.

"They spent a lot of time trying to run me down and not necessarily telling the truth," Mr. Obama said. "But what they didn't talk about is you and what you're seeing in your lives and what you're going through and what your friends and your neighbors are going through."

For 19 months, Mr. Obama has built his campaign around a mantra of change, with his slogan, "Change We Can Believe In," emblazoned on the side of his plane and on posters at his rallies. He had the message largely to himself throughout the primary race. But now he suddenly faces competition for it from Mr. McCain, who, along with his advisers, concluded before the conventions ended that the theme of "experience" he had been running on was not working.

At a fund-raising dinner Friday evening at the Middletown, N.J., home of the rock star Jon Bon Jovi, Mr. Obama braced his supporters for a tough contest ahead.

"I hope you guys are up for a fight," he said. As about 150 contributors applauded, he added: "I don't believe in coming in second. The American people can't afford for us to come in second."

The McCain campaign is promoting Ms. Palin, the second woman to run on a presidential ticket of a major party, as an embodiment of change. Democrats question whether that is possible from a woman who opposes abortion and is out of step with many female voters on other issues. But for now she has brought sizzle to Mr. McCain's once-sleepy campaign.

Their stop in Cedarburg (where Ms. Palin ordered some richly mixed "moose tracks" ice cream) showed their determination to challenge Mr. Obama in Wisconsin, a state where he has enjoyed a comfortable edge but where Mr. McCain has invested heavily in television advertising.

Democratic strategists said Friday that they did not yet know whether the field of battleground states would expand or contract with the addition of Ms. Palin to the ticket. McCain advisers said they planned to use her in the strongly conservative areas where she has the most appeal. They also said her popularity ensured they would send her to large television markets as well as the small and medium markets traditionally reserved for the vice-presidential nominee.

"Whether she has additional reach," said Mr. Axelrod, the Obama strategist, "is something that we'll have to see."

The Obama campaign's immediate focus is on the economy and a broader call for change, but questions from voters suggest that the race could also turn on social and cultural matters. For the second straight day, Mr. Obama was asked whether he would tighten rules for gun owners, an issue that has proved vexing to many Democratic candidates.

"If you believe that I'm the best guy when it comes to jobs," he replied, "if you believe that I'm the best guy when it comes to health care, if you believe that I'm the best guy on education and I'm going to be looking out for you and fighting for you, this can't be the reason not to vote for me. Your guns - we're not going to mess with them, all right?"

Ms. Palin, meanwhile, opened a new front against Mr. Obama, who said in an interview televised by Fox News on Thursday that the troop escalation in Iraq had succeeded beyond expectations.

"Just last night, Senator Obama finally broke and brought himself to admit what all the rest of us have known for quite some time," Ms. Palin said in Cedarburg, adding that "thanks to the skill and valor of our troops, the surge in Iraq has succeeded."

"I guess when you turn out to be profoundly wrong on a vital national security issue," she continued, "maybe it's comfortable to pretend that everybody was wrong today, but I remember it a little differently."

One woman in the Cedarburg crowd said she had been up since dawn and had driven an hour to see Ms. Palin, not Mr. McCain.

"She's me," said the woman, Tana Krueger, 58, a Republican from Fond du Lac, Wis., who is a mother of six.

Ms. Krueger, a risk manager at a state hospital, said that she might not have come out to see Mr. McCain on his own and that while she might have voted for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had Mrs. Clinton been the Democratic nominee, she was now definitely going to vote for Mr. McCain because of his selection of Ms. Palin.

"I can just really relate to everything in her life," Ms. Krueger said. "Children with disabilities. Teenage pregnancy."

By Elisabeth Bumiller and Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times, September 5, 2008

WASILLA, Alaska - Shortly after taking office as governor in 2006, Sarah Palin sent an e-mail message to Paul E. Riley, her former pastor in the Assembly of God Church, which her family began attending when she was a youth. She needed spiritual advice in how to do her new job, said Mr. Riley, who is 78 and retired from the church.

"She asked for a biblical example of people who were great leaders and what was the secret of their leadership," Mr. Riley said.

He wrote back that she should read again from the Old Testament the story of Esther, a beauty queen who became a real one, gaining the king's ear to avert the slaughter of the Jews and vanquish their enemies. When Esther is called to serve, God grants her a strength she never knew she had.

Mr. Riley said he thought Ms. Palin had lived out the advice as governor, and would now do so again as the Republican Party's vice-presidential nominee.

"God has given her the opportunity to serve," he said. "And God has given her the strength to carry out her goals."

Ms. Palin's religious life - what she believes and how her beliefs intersect or not with her life in public office in Alaska - has become a topic of intense interest and scrutiny across the political spectrum as she has risen from relative obscurity to become Senator John McCain's running mate.

Interviews with the two pastors she has been most closely associated with here in her hometown - she now attends the Wasilla Bible Church, though she keeps in touch with Mr. Riley and recently spoke at an event at his former church - and with friends and acquaintances who have worshipped with her point to a firm conclusion: her foundation and source of guidance is the Bible, and with it has come a conviction to be God's servant.

"Just be amazed at the umbrella of this church here, where God is going to send you from this church," Ms. Palin told the gathering in June of young graduates of a ministry program at the Assembly of God Church, a video of which has been posted on YouTube.

"Believe me," she said, "I know what I am saying - where God has sent me, from underneath the umbrella of this church, throughout the state."

Janet Kincaid, who has known Ms. Palin for about 15 years and worked with her on some Wasilla town boards and commissions when Ms. Palin was mayor here, said Ms. Palin's spiritual path, from the Assembly of God to Wasilla Bible, has had a consistent theme.

"The churches that Sarah has attended all believe in a literal translation of the Bible," Ms. Kincaid said. "Her principal ethical and moral beliefs stem from this."

Prayer, and belief in its power, is another constant theme, Ms. Kincaid said, in what she has witnessed in Ms. Palin. "Her beliefs are firm in the power of prayer - let's put it that way," she said.

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Ms. Palin had been baptized Roman Catholic as an infant, but declined to comment further.

"We're not going to get into discussing her religion," she said.

In the address at the Assembly of God Church here, Ms. Palin's ease in talking about the intersection of faith and public life was clear. Among other things, she encouraged the group of young church leaders to pray that "God's will" be done in bringing about the construction of a big pipeline in the state, and suggested her work as governor would be hampered "if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God."

She also told the group that her eldest child, Track, would soon be deployed by the Army to Iraq, and that they should pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan."

Larry Kroon, who has been the presiding pastor at Wasilla Bible for the last 30 years, declined to describe Ms. Palin's beliefs or the role she plays in the church, but suggested that she is more of a back-bencher than a leading light.

"Todd and Sarah come in as Todd and Sarah - they're very discreet about it," he said, referring to Ms. Palin's husband.

One of the musical directors at the church, Adele Morgan, who has known Ms. Palin since the third grade, said the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less "extreme" than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.

"A lot of churches are about music and media and having a big profile," Ms. Morgan said. "We are against that. That is why it is so attractive to politicians because they can just sit there and be safe."

"We've gotten a lot of their people when the other churches get too extreme," Ms. Morgan continued. However, she added, "If you lift your hands when we're singing, we're not going to shoot you down."

Mr. Kroon (pronounced krone), a soft-spoken, bearded Alaska native, said he was convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the task of believers is to ponder and analyze the book for meaning - including scrutiny, he said, for errors and mistranslations over the centuries that may have obscured the original intent.

It is that analysis, he believes, not anything he preaches, that makes most people in his church socially conservative, he said.

"I trust my people can go out with that and they can deal with an issue such as abortion - any issue out there - whether it's in the public arena, or in the hospital room with their relative dying of cancer, because they will be equipped with a biblical perspective that will enable them to react in that situation," said Mr. Kroon, who described himself as "pro-life."

"Our congregation would tend to be conservative, and it's not because I've told them to be," he said.

Some Jewish groups have raised concerns since the announcement of Ms. Palin's selection to the Republican ticket that discussions in the Wasilla Bible Church might go beyond conservatism. Last month, a leader in the group Jews for Jesus, which advocates converting Jews to Christianity - but which has been accused by some Jews of anti-Semitism - spoke at the church. The speaker, David Brickner, spoke enthusiastically about the "miracle" of conversions in Israel by the group's missionaries.

The church has also come under fire among some gay advocacy groups for promoting an upcoming Focus on the Family conference in Anchorage dealing with the so-called curing of homosexuality.

The Wasilla Bible Church, which draws 800 to 1,000 people for Sunday service, itself is discreet to the point of self-effacement. Only a single small sign on the gravel road leading up to the property declares the name. On the three-year-old building itself, which looks more like a warehouse than a cathedral, a large cross over the rear entrance is the only declaration of purpose.

People who know the church and its parishioners say that the mix of simplicity and quirkiness is common in Alaska, where many people have moved over the years and left their pasts and old church lives behind.

Homegrown churches like Wasilla - started in the early 1970s by a handful of families, including Ms. Morgan's, during the construction boom in building the Trans-Alaska pipeline - have become singularly Alaskan. Mr. Kroon still remembers the days of a single room with a wood-burning stove that he would have to fire up before services.

Mr. Kroon said the Alaskan spirit of go-it-alone individuality gives the church a mix of joiners and resolute nonjoiners. The church offers full-immersion water baptism, which some people want and others do not.

"I have people who've been here since I got here, and they still say, 'Don't put me on the membership roll,' " he said. "There's definitely a cultural element."

What Barack Obama won't tell you about his community organizing past.

In late October 1987, Barack Obama and Jerry Kellman took a weekend off from their jobs as community organizers in Chicago and traveled to a conference on social justice and the black church at Harvard. During an evening break in the schedule, they strolled around campus in their shirtsleeves, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. Two-and-a-half years earlier, Kellman had hired Obama to organize residents of Chicago's South Side. Now, Obama had something to tell his friend and mentor.

It had to do, in part, with his father. At the time, Obama had just learned from his African half-sister what had happened to Barack Obama Sr., who abandoned him when he was two years old. After receiving his master's degree in economics from Harvard, the elder Obama had returned to Kenya, where he became a high-ranking government official. But, when he criticized Kenya's increasingly corrupt and authoritarian government, he lost his job and had to live from hand to mouth, depending on the goodwill of relatives while drinking heavily. Obama told Kellman that he feared ending up destitute and unhappy like his dad. "He wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable income," Kellman recalls.

But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him "to make major changes in poverty or discrimination." To do that, he said, "you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials." In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. Personally, he might end up like his father; politically, he would fail to improve the lot of those he was trying to help.

And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school. Kellman, who was already thinking of leaving organizing himself, found no reason to argue with him. "Organizing," Kellman tells me, as we sit in a Chicago restaurant down the street from the Catholic church where he now works as a lay minister, "is always a lost cause." Obama, circa late 1987, might or might not have put it quite that strongly. But he had clearly developed serious doubts about the career he was pursuing.

Yet, two decades later, to hear Obama the presidential candidate tell it, those years in Chicago as a community organizer shaped the person--and the politician--he has become. Campaigning in Iowa last year, he declared that community organizing was "the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School." In a video this spring, Obama stated that community organizing is "something I carry with me when I think about politics today--obviously at a different level and in a different place, but the same principles still apply." "Barack is not a politician first and foremost," Michelle Obama has said. "He's a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change."

Certainly, Obama has good reason to tout his community organizing experience. After graduating from an Ivy League college, Obama passed up more lucrative jobs to devote three years to organizing low-income African Americans in Chicago. That choice tells us something about his values, and his pride in it is understandable.

But his campaign has taken the point a step further, implying that Obama the politician is a direct descendant of Obama the organizer--that he has carried the practices and principles of community organizing into his campaign, and would carry them into the White House as well. This is the version of Obama's biography that most journalists have accepted.

In truth, however, if you examine carefully how Obama conducted himself as an organizer and how he has conducted himself as a politician, if you consider what he said about organizing to his fellow organizers, and if you look at the reasons he gave friends and colleagues for abandoning organizing, then a very different picture emerges: that of a disillusioned activist who fashioned his political identity not as an extension of community organizing but as a wholesale rejection of it. Indeed, the most important thing to know about Barack Obama's time as a community organizer in Chicago may not be what he gained from the experience--but rather why, in late 1987, he decided to quit.

Obama arrived in South Chicago in 1985 to find a bleak scene. Roseland and the northern edge of Riverdale, the neighborhoods to which he was assigned, had been decimated by the collapse of the steel industry. In Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote of "the boarded-up homes, the decaying storefronts, the aging church rolls, [and the] kids from unknown families who swaggered down the streets." Most middle-class whites had moved out, and, while the area was home to a few middleclass blacks, "[t]he stores and banks had left with their white customers, causing main thoroughfares to decompose." Many of the area's residents lived in the 2,000-unit Altgeld Gardens, public housing that was bounded by the fetid Calumet River, an expressway, and a sewage treatment plant that emitted, Obama wrote, a "heavy, putrid odor."

The election in 1983 of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, had given blacks in South Chicago "a new idea of themselves," Obama observed. Yet the mayor's efforts to revive the city's worst neighborhoods were stymied by the conservative white majority on the city council.

Obama had moved to Chicago to work for Kellman, a transplanted New Yorker eleven years his senior, and his partner, Mike Kruglik. The pair was trying to build a regional community organization that spanned South Chicago, Chicago's southern suburbs, and Northwest Indiana. Kellman and Kruglik wanted their new recruit to establish a branch centered in Roseland. It was to be called the Developing Communities Project.

Obama had worked briefly as an organizer in Harlem, but, in Chicago, he learned the principles of community organizing from Kellman, Kruglik, and other disciples of Saul Alinsky, a hardscrabble, profane Chicagoan who, in the late 1930s, had organized white ethnic meatpacking workers in the area around the old Chicago Stockyards. Alinsky was heavily influenced by John L. Lewis, the president of the United Mine Workers and founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He wanted to do for working-class communities what Lewis and the CIO had done for workplaces: unite people of different backgrounds around common goals and use their collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be.

Alinsky had died in 1972, but not before achieving considerable success in Chicago and other cities. And, while some of his opinions--like his derogation of Martin Luther King's abilities as an organizer--were not shared by Kellman and other followers, his general principles would guide groups like the Gamaliel Foundation, which trained people who went on to work for the Developing Communities Project and similar organizations. They became the underpinning of Obama's approach. "His assignment was to operate in the classic style," Kruglik, a stubby, scruffy, intense man who now works for Gamaliel, tells me.

These rules can be reduced, more or less, to a few central ideas. Alinsky believed that humans respond to their own selfinterest rather than conscience or morality. (People are "moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, " he argued, while morality is a "rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest.") As a result, the job of an organizer is to discover what citizens think is in their self-interest and then help them fight for it. Alinsky also instructed that the organizer himself should not become a public leader, but should operate behind the scenes to encourage "natural" or "native" leaders among the people he is organizing. That is, the goal of an organizer is never to create a movement based on his own charisma. ("We're trying to build an organization with staying power, not a movement based on instant power and charisma," Ernesto Cortes Jr., a prominent Alinsky disciple, explained in 1988. ) Finally, Alinsky felt that organizers should draw a clear line between their work and the political world. An organization should forge "no permanent political ties," declared a guide put out by the Industrial Areas Foundation, which Alinsky created. When I asked former community organizer John Kretzmann--who teaches at Northwestern and writes about organizing--whether organizers saw all politicians as "whores," he replied, "Even if you found one that wasn't, it makes no sense to get close to them."

Obama attempted to put these principles into practice in South Chicago. Kellman and Kruglik's initial objective was to revive the region's manufacturing base--and preserve what remained of its steel industry--by working with unions and church groups to pressure companies and the city; but those hopes were quickly dashed. Indeed, during his three years in South Chicago, Obama was constantly having to scale back his objectives as one project after another faltered. First, he got community members to demand a job center that would provide job referrals, but there were few jobs to distribute. Then, he tried to create what he called a "second-level consumer economy" in Roseland consisting of shops, restaurants, and theaters. This, too, went nowhere. At that point, Kellman advised Obama to move elsewhere. "Stay here, and you are bound to fail," he told him.

But Obama remained. Next, he began to focus on providing social services for Altgeld Gardens. "We didn't yet have the power to change state welfare policy, or create local jobs, or bring substantially more money into the schools," he wrote. "But what we could do was begin to improve basic services at Altgeld--get the toilets fixed, the heaters working, the windows repaired." Obama helped the residents wage a successful campaign to get the Chicago Housing Authority to promise to remove asbestos from the units; but, after an initial burst of activity, the city failed to keep its promise. (As of last year, some residences still had not been cleared of asbestos.) In waging these campaigns, Obama's organization added staff, gained adherents, and won church support, including from the congregation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But it failed to stem the area's overall decline. "Ain't nothing gonna change, Mr. Obama," says one resident quoted in Dreams from My Father who grows disillusioned with the Developing Communities Project. "We just gonna concentrate on saving our money so we can move outta here as fast as we can."

Publicly, however, Obama did not appear discouraged. He continued to train other organizers for the Gamaliel Foundation. "It was the same traditional organizing leadership training," recalls Obama trainee David Kindler. Obama also put the best face on what he was doing. Sometime before he left Chicago, he wrote an article for a magazine called Illinois Issues that would eventually appear in an anthology titled After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois. In the article, he insisted that his project had achieved "impressive results" in South Chicago. While acknowledging that the "exodus from the inner city of financial resources, institutions, role models and jobs" posed difficulties for organizers, he insisted that "none of these problems is insurmountable."

Reflecting organizers' general attitude toward politicians, he downplayed the importance of Mayor Washington. "The election of Harold Washington in Chicago or of Richard Hatcher in Gary were not enough to bring jobs to inner-city neighborhoods or cut a 50 percent drop-out rate in the schools, although they did achieve an important symbolic effect," he wrote. "In fact, much-needed black achievement in prominent city positions has put us in the awkward position of administering underfunded systems neither equipped nor eager to address the needs of the urban poor and being forced to compromise their interests to more powerful demands from other sectors." To be successful, Obama argued, the efforts of politicians had to be "undergirded by a systematic approach to community organization." Obama also criticized the role of charismatic leadership, writing that "a viable organization can only be achieved if a broadly based indigenous leadership--and not one or two charismatic leaders--can knit together the diverse interests of their local institutions."

Yet there is considerable evidence that, even as he was writing these words, Obama was having doubts about community organizing. By the early fall of 1987--a little more than two years after he had come to Chicago--Obama had decided to apply to Harvard Law School. At some point thereafter, he began to explain his decision to friends and colleagues. The most revealing of these discussions are not reported in Dreams from My Father.

It was not just the walk he took with Kellman through Harvard's campus. Obama also talked to Kruglik about his reasons for leaving Chicago. In their conversations, he described politics--and winning political office--as the most important step toward achieving change. And, instead of seeing Harold Washington as buffeted by forces beyond his control, he now aspired to be Washington. "He was fascinated by Mayor Washington," says Kruglik. "Harold Washington inspired him to think about becoming a politician." Kruglik says that Obama wanted to follow in the mayor's footsteps: Washington had gone to law school, later becoming a state senator, then a congressman, and finally Chicago's mayor. "He told me that he was thinking of running for mayor some day, " Kruglik says.

Obama also talked to Northwestern professor John McKnight, a former community organizer who is a member of the Gamaliel Foundation's board of directors and had helped to train Obama. He asked McKnight for a law school recommendation and told him that he eventually wanted to go into politics. McKnight warned him that politics, unlike community organizing, would inevitably require compromising his values and ideals. "The average legislator is surrounded by competing interests," McKnight told him. "Most of the time what they are doing is trying to balance interests." Obama, however, was not to be dissuaded. Recalls McKnight, "At the time, neighborhood organizing was very parochial. ... He could see that the impact wouldn't reach beyond the neighborhood. The change he was seeking was bigger."

But it wasn't simply that Obama dreamed of pursuing change on a grander scale. By late 1987, he seems to have grown disillusioned with the underlying principles of community organizing. In September 1989, the editors of Illinois Issues organized a symposium featuring, among others, the contributors to After Alinsky. It took place around a circular table in a conference room at the Woods Charitable Fund (a backer of the Gamaliel Foundation) in downtown Chicago. Kretzmann was the moderator, and participants included political scientist Paul Green, author Ben Joravsky, and Obama, who was then entering his second year of law school.

Joravsky kicked off the discussion by recounting Alinsky's core principles. Green then brought up a controversial organization, Save our Neighborhoods/Save our City (SON/SOC), that had launched in February 1984 in response to fears that Harold Washington would promote public housing in certain white neighborhoods--leading to an influx of black residents. As Green noted, SON/SOC was organized by Alinsky disciples who were following their mentor's principle of basing demands on self-interest.

Green insisted that there was an anti-establishment core to son/soc's agenda. "Here are a bunch of blue-collar people ... working to help their neighborhood, " he said. He also pointed out that the group had carefully directed its ire against unscrupulous realtors rather than blacks and had tried to reach an accommodation with Mayor Washington. Joravsky responded by criticizing SON/SOC for using racial appeals to build its organization. As others joined and the argument threatened to grow heated, Kretzmann called on Obama to discuss organizing in low-income black communities. But Obama had been provoked by the discussion of SON/SOC. And, a year removed from South Chicago, he wanted to say something about community organizing in general.

Obama--sporting a white shirt, tie, and incipient Afro--was clearly troubled by the example of SON/SOC, which suggested that an organization, acting on Alinsky's principles, could become racist. (Indeed, Alinsky's first group, the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, had become a bastion of support for segregationist George Wallace in the 1960s.) Obama was also troubled by his own experience in South Chicago, where he had failed to make any headway on the community's central problem--the absence of jobs--and had been reduced to demanding repairs in public housing. That, too, had derived from acting according to Alinsky's principle of trying to win victories against the powers that be based on immediate self-interest.

But Obama was not ready to state his case forthrightly. ("We were all on our best behavior," Joravsky recalls.) Instead, he expressed his doubts obliquely by drawing a distinction between the "two roles that an organizer was supposed to play ... getting power, getting the stop sign, making things work" and "the educative function of organizing." By the latter, Obama meant an organizer's duty to frame citizens' efforts in terms of a larger objective and a greater good: something more noble than dissuading realtors from selling homes to blacks in white neighborhoods or more substantial than getting a stop sign installed.

Obama put it this way: "The process whereby people in communities, like the community SON/SOC was organizing or the community where I was organizing, start to get bigger horizons, start to understand how they connect up with other people, how their power is involved with the power of other people--it seems to me that that strain gets lost. ... At some point, you have to link up winning that stop sign or getting that home equity with the larger trends, larger movements in the city or the country." He quoted an Alinsky disciple as saying, "I am not trying to build some grand utopian organization. I would just like to win it." "That's problematic," Obama noted. In other words, winning wasn't important if what was won was harmful or insignificant.

But Obama didn't stop there. He had a litany of criticisms of Alinsky-style organizing that he wanted to put forward. He objected to community organizers' dismissal of charismatic leadership and of movements. Instead of making the point directly, he recalled a friend telling him of an IAF trainer who complained that "movements are rotten with charismatic leaders." Obama said his friend had responded, "That's nonsense. We want a movement. I would love to have Martin Luther King here right now." Obama argued that charismatic leaders and movements bring "long-term vision," and that community organizers cannot be effective without such vision.

Obama also criticized community organizers' "suspicion of politics." "The problem we face now in terms of organizing is that politics is a major arena of power," Obama said. "That's where your major dialogue, discussion, is taking place. To marginalize yourself from that process is a damaging thing, and one that needs to be rethought."

Before he was done, Obama had rejected the guiding principles of community organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion of politics itself. But he did so in a way that seemed to elude the other participants. Two decades later, Green couldn't recall any disagreement over his more positive take on SON/SOC. Joravsky also didn't remember Obama's criticisms of organizing. Instead, he recalled thinking how "cool" and "well-spoken" Obama was.

Obama, too, seemed initially oblivious to the harsh implications of his own words. While he was at Harvard, he would return to Chicago to train organizers at Gamaliel, and, after graduating and moving back to Chicago, he would retain ties to the city's community organizing network--serving on the boards of the Woods fund and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, which promotes organizing among African Americans on the city's South Side. But he would never again practice community organizing, as he did in the 1980s. And he would begin to construct a political identity for himself that was not simply different from his identity as a community organizer--but was, in fact, its very opposite.

Based purely on his organizing background, one would have expected Obama to become a bread-and-butter politician, a spokesman for his constituents' immediate needs. Instead, Obama became a politician of vision, not issues--one who appealed to voters' values rather than their immediate self-interest. As a state senator in Illinois, he was best known for his advocacy of government reform. Asked in September 1999 to explain why someone should vote for him for Congress against incumbent Bobby Rush, Obama told the Hyde Park Citizen that, unlike Rush, he had "a vision." And, as a Democratic presidential candidate, he has run on an abstract platform of "change" that appeals to many young and upscale voters, but has fallen flat among the white working-class voters whom Alinsky once courted.

Obama has also eschewed the retiring persona of the organizer. Initially awkward as a speaker, he became a charismatic politician whose run for president has produced something very much like a movement. And, while his campaign has used some techniques from community organizing to rally state-by-state support, it is the antithesis of the ground-up, locally dominated, naturally led network of community groups that Alinsky envisioned. Obama, in short, has become exactly the kind of politician his mentors might have warned against.

None of this is to say that Obama was wrong to abandon community organizing for politics. Or that his critique of organizing was incorrect. In fact, many of today's community organizers would acknowledge that Obama was absolutely right to question the limitations of Alinskystyle organizing. The elevation of self-interest at the expense of higher ideals can clearly be an ugly thing. Improving people's lives has to be about more than installing stop signs. And no one who hopes to truly change urban communities can stay out of politics altogether. Indeed, in contrast to what Alinsky advised, many community organizations now participate in political campaigns.

Still, one has to wonder: In making the transition from organizer to politician, did Obama go too far in rejecting one of the cardinal principles of community organizing? True, appeals to selfinterest can sometimes lead organizations astray. But such appeals are also a necessary part of community organizing--and politics as well. Few candidates could hope to win an election at any level without convincing their constituents that they understand their immediate hopes and fears. And presidential candidates are no exception. Bill "I feel your pain" Clinton certainly had the ability to persuade voters that he identified with their interests. So did Ronald Reagan. Al Gore and John Kerry did not.

In this election, Obama can count on the votes of African Americans in Roseland as well as many upscale voters attracted by his message of change. But he also needs to win support from the descendants of Back of the Yards and SON/SOC--working-class voters who, today, are more worried about high gas prices and rising heath care costs than about the prospect of blacks moving in next door. To win their votes, Obama needs to do precisely what he once taught organizers to do: speak to the self-interest of ordinary people.

So far, this has not been Obama's strong suit as a presidential candidate. To his credit, he has certainly talked about gas prices and health insurance. But, as Obama would have told his trainees 20 years ago, conveying concern requires more than saying the right thing; it involves seeing the world from the vantage of those you are trying to win over--and convincing them that your empathy is sincere.

When Obama came to South Chicago, he believed in community organizing; within two-and-a-half years--by the time he and Jerry Kellman went for their late October walk around Harvard's campus--he was clearly growing disillusioned. Now, having fashioned a political identity in near-total opposition to the core principles of his one-time profession, Obama's bid for the presidency may come down to this: Is he willing to rediscover--and put into practice--one of the main principles he followed as a twentysomething activist all those years ago?

By John B. Judis, The New Republic, September 10, 2008

If there was one pre-eminent characteristic of the Republican convention this week, it was the quality of deception. Words completely lost their meaning. Reality was turned upside down.

From the faux populist gibberish mouthed by speaker after speaker, you would never have known that the Republicans have been in power over the past several years and used that titanic power to lead the country to its present sorry state.

In his acceptance speech on Thursday night, Senator John McCain did his best Sam Cooke imitation ("A Change is Gonna Come") and vowed to put the country "back on the road to prosperity and peace."

Mr. McCain spoke at the end of a day in which stock market indexes plunged. The next morning the Labor Department gave us the grim news that another 84,000 jobs had been lost in August, and that the official unemployment rate had climbed to 6.1 percent - the highest in five years.

If there were any good ideas at this convention of mostly rich and mostly right-wing delegates about how to haul the country out of this mess that the G.O.P. has gotten it into, they were kept well hidden. Perhaps they were tucked away behind the more prominently displayed creationism and "just-say-no to global warming" documents.

It stretches the mind almost to the breaking point to think of John McCain as an agent of substantive change. He once believed that Phil Gramm was the most qualified person in the United States to be president. And he now believes that Sarah Palin is the most qualified to be vice president.

That is not the fault of Mr. Gramm or Ms. Palin. But it sure tells us a lot about the judgment of John McCain.

Mr. McCain is a warrior, a former fighter pilot, and it's no secret that Americans have long been thrilled by the romantic Top Gun narrative of fighter pilots, those specialists in the realm of the dangerous and the reckless. But we've also seen what dangerous and reckless behavior in the White House can do to a nation.

Sarah Palin may someday become president, and for all we know she may be a great one. But she was not chosen as Mr. McCain's running mate after long and careful consideration and consultation. The best evidence is that she was a somewhat impulsive choice. Voters would be well advised to proceed with caution.

For most voters, the No. 1 issue in this campaign is the financial struggle facing working families that are trying to cope with job losses, declining wages, the high cost of health care, home foreclosures, bankruptcies and the like.

To a great extent these problems are the result of national policies, forged under Republican rule, that overwhelmingly favored the interests of the very wealthy over working people.

Senator McCain's economic guru through all of this was Mr. Gramm, a former Republican senator from Texas and chairman of the banking committee. He was a demon for deregulation, and he and his wife, Wendy, who once led the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration, were among the big recipients of Enron's largess.

Phil Gramm was one of the lead architects of the breathtakingly irresponsible policies (No more restraints! No more regulation!) that led to the subprime mortgage meltdown and the current credit disaster.

A corporate insider in the Bush-Cheney mold, Mr. Gramm was thought to be in line to serve as treasury secretary in a McCain administration until July when he put his foot very publicly in his mouth. To Senator McCain's great embarrassment, Mr. Gramm dismissed the economic downturn as a "mental recession" and complained that the U.S. had become a "nation of whiners."

That may have been a political no-no, but it was an accurate expression of the slavish devotion of the G.O.P. to the rich and powerful among us, and of the party's contempt for the interests of working families and the poor. Senator McCain, it should be noted, fully shared Mr. Gramm's anti-regulatory zeal.

This is an odd crowd, indeed, to be offering itself as a champion for working people.

Senator McCain has been a virtuoso at schmoozing and using the press, which he once jokingly referred to as his base. Much of the press has eagerly collaborated in the idea of him as an outsider, a maverick - in some sense an American everyman. But Mr. McCain, who has been in Washington for more than a quarter of a century, was always embedded with the forces on the side of the corporate aristocracy.

He didn't just stumble into the toxic relationships that got him into trouble with the Keating Five. And there was a reason for the closeness of his bond with Phil Gramm.

The populists' garb hangs awkwardly on the frame of John McCain. Everyman he ain't.

By Bob Herbert, The New York Times, September 6, 2008

George W. Bush's convention produced one that was sustainable until Katrina and the 2005-06 meltdown in Iraq -- yet that may be redeemed in history by the success of the surge and the rapid response to Gustav.

One of the themes hammered home at Barack Obama's convention was McCain equals Bush. That never struck me as sustainable and was pretty well demolished on the first full day of McCain's convention. Neither Obama nor McCain is a generic candidate -- they are distinctive individuals, to whose specific characteristics voters respond, positively or negatively.

The Republican convention's premise is that McCain is the maverick reformer -- an American version of Nicolas Sarkozy, who replaced an unpopular president of his own party. There is plenty in McCain's record to back that up. Not least is his selection of Sarah Palin for vice president. Palin's record of successfully battling establishment Republicans and oil companies in Alaska clearly appealed to McCain.

And that was amplified by the mainstream media attacks on her. Now the media, which were not alarmed by Obama's thin record, is worried about Palin being a heartbeat away from the presidency. Other women who were stay-at-home moms for years and then emerged into public life have outperformed their resumes -- namely, Katharine Graham, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright, Nancy Pelosi and Geraldine Ferraro. Palin, who has negotiated a natural gas pipeline with the oil companies and Canadian federal, provincial and Inuit authorities, may do so, too. We'll see if that argument is sustainable.

Voters express great dissatisfaction with the economy, even though it grew 3.3 percent in the last quarter. The Obama convention contended that the Democratic nominees understood people's woes from personal experience and that their programs would provide economic security. But the substance of those programs -- refundable tax credits (i.e., payments to those who pay no income tax) and a national health insurance option -- are unfamiliar to voters, and their details can be hard to explain.

The McCain convention's thesis is that higher taxes on high earners in a time of slow growth will squelch the economy (this was Herbert Hoover's policy, after all).

These assertions, too, are unfamiliar to voters. And, up to this point in the campaign, neither party has set out its programs clearly (or characterized the other side's fairly).

During the course of the year, two issues have unexpectedly turned in favor of the Republicans. One is Iraq: It is becoming plain that the surge has succeeded, and victory is in sight. McCain can argue he was right; Obama can argue it is safe to leave, as he has long urged. But the issue has lost much of its salience.

The other issue is energy. Four-dollar-a-gallon gas has produced majorities for offshore drilling, which McCain now favors and Palin always has, and which Obama and Joe Biden still dismiss as insignificant. Despite the recent drop in gas prices, the Republican position looks more sustainable to me, likely to trump the Democrats' quasi-religious fervor for renewable energy sources. Al Gore's speech was well received in Denver, but voters are not prepared to accept the sharp economic sacrifices he demands.

This election cycle has been full of surprises and unpredicted turns. Both candidates' vice presidential choices tended to undercut, at least marginally, their basic themes of change and experience. The political fundamentals -- an unpopular president, a sluggish economy, an unpopular war -- still favor the Democrats. But my sense is that the Democratic meme is less sustainable than the Republican' appeal. Which leaves things roughly tied.

The national conventions are political shows staged to influence voters.

Soon, we can measure the bounce that the two tickets have received from their gatherings. But the more important question is whether the conventions establish arguments that are sustainable -- over the course of the campaign and, for the winning ticket, over four years of governance. Four years ago, John Kerry's convention produced a narrative that proved unsustainable.

How the GOP gave in to anti-abortion absolutism.

In the 1980s, the rising conservative movement tried to frame the pro-life cause as part of a broader family-values agenda that included reducing rates of illegitimate childbirth, welfare dependency, and divorce. To Ronald Reagan and many of his most ardent supporters, abortion-on-demand was the pre-eminent example of the breakdown of traditional morality brought about the sexual revolution. Few remember it this way, but Reagan's "evil empire" speech, delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983, had more to say about the right of parents to prevent their daughters from receiving contraceptives without their consent than it did than about the Soviets.

In fact, these two conservative social goals - ending abortion and upholding the model of the nuclear family - were always in tension. The reason is that, like it or not, the availability of legal abortion supports the kind of family structure that conservatives once felt so strongly about: two parents raising children in a stable relationship, without government assistance. By 12^th grade, 60 percent of high school girls are sexually active or, as Reagan put it, "promiscuous." Teen-pregnancy rates have been trending downward in recent years, but even so, 7 percent of high-school girls become pregnant every year. And the unfortunate reality is that teenagers who carry their pregnancies to term drastically diminish their chances of living out the conservative, or the American, dream.

Forget the Juno scenario - in the real world, only a tiny fraction of unwed mothers give their babies up for adoption. If you do not allow teenage girls who accidentally become pregnant to have abortions, you are demanding either that they raise their children as single mothers or that they marry in shotgun weddings. By the numbers, neither choice is promising. Unmarried teenage moms seldom get much financial or emotional support from the fathers of their babies. They tend to drop out of high school and go on the dole, and they are prone to lives of poverty, frustration, and disorder. Only 2 percent of them make it through college by the age of 30. The Bristol Palin option doesn't promote family happiness, stability, or traditional structure, either. Of women under 18 who marry, whether because of pregnancy or not, nearly half divorce within 10 years - double the rate for those who wait until they're 25.

I've long expected the Republican Party to resolve this conflict in its social vision by moderating its stance on abortion. Politically, pro-life absolutism has never made much sense. A significant element within the GOP - libertarians, economic conservatives, Barbara Bush - favors leaving Roe v. Wade alone. A majority of the country agrees. Meanwhile, the percentage of people on either side of the debate who say they'll vote only for a candidate who shares their views has been steadily shrinking. Since Lee Atwater's heyday, pragmatic Republicans have been trying to figure out how the party can become a "big tent," making room for a pro-choice as well as a pro-life faction. Until recently, the modernizers included John McCain himself, who in 1999 said, "Certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations." That was only one of several attempts on McCain's part to evolve his position. If Roe ever were repealed, there would follow a fight in every state about whether to ban abortion by statute. Politically, this could be the best thing to happen to liberals since the New Deal. We got a taste of this dynamic after the Supreme Court's 1989 Webster decision, which allowed states to restrict abortion in certain ways. As my colleague Willian Saletan has argued, fear of Roe being overturned contributed to Democratic electoral gains in 1989 and 1990 and to a wave of more conciliatory rhetoric from the GOP.

But renewed evangelical dominance of the GOP in the Bush years has pushed McCain in the opposite direction - to the point of letting Phyllis Schlafly revise the abortion plank in the party's 2008 platform. The new version actually eliminates language from the 2004 edition rejecting "punitive action against women who have an abortion." This "base" bias explains how McCain ended up with a wildly underqualified running mate, instead of his preferred pro-choice veep picks, Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge. It's the reason social conservatives have wholeheartedly embraced Sarah Palin, who chose to raise a child with Down syndrome rather than terminate a pregnancy. And it's why a pregnant, unmarried 17-year-old and her boyfriend appeared onstage in St. Paul with the Republican presidential nominee last week. A pregnant teenager as role model, Mary Cheney's gay parenting, the primary caregiver to a special-needs infant working a second, 24/7 job - the Republican right is prepared to overcome its objection to all of this and more as the price of an uncompromising pro-life agenda.

Give the anti-abortion extremists credit for living their principles. If they weren't deadly serious, they wouldn't sabotage their party's political prospects or sacrifice so many other values they hold dear for the sake of denying exceptions in cases of rape and incest. But Sarah Palin's pro-life extremism is as ethically flawed as it is politically damaging to the GOP. By vaunting their pro-life agenda over everything else, conservatives are abandoning one of their most valuable insights: that intact, two-parent families are best for children and for the foundation of a healthy society. The evidence here is overwhelming. Children with two parents, whether of the same sex or the opposite sex, are vastly better off. By every measure social scientists have devised, those raised by two parents grow up healthier (physically and psychologically), wealthier, and wiser, on average, than those raised by a single parent, divorced parents, or even a parent and a stepparent.

About this, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Bill Bennett, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and, yes, Dan Quayle were entirely correct. Remember Murphy Brown? I always thought the former vice president was on solid ground when he called it morally irresponsible to encourage women without the TV character's resources to embark on child-rearing on their own. In today's GOP, Quayle wouldn't condemn Murphy Brown. He'd call her up to the stage and salute her for choosing life.

By Jacob Weisberg, Slate Magazine, Sept. 6, 2008

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. -- If John McCain becomes the nation's 44th president, it may be thanks to Michigan -- a prize the Republicans think they can claim for the first time in nearly 20 years.

On Friday, Sen. McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, arrived in this auto-plant town in Detroit's suburbs to begin their final election sprint. The goal: Persuade disaffected voters like Howard Mitchell that Republicans still deserve their support.

Mr. Mitchell, a 28-year-old video technician at an auto plant in nearby Pontiac, would seem a promising target for the Democrats this year. In 2000, he bucked his Republican neighbors and voted for Al Gore for President. And while he backed George W. Bush in 2004, today he is angry about Michigan's weak economy and nervous about the handling of Iraq. Mr. Mitchell says he wants change.

The good news for Republicans: Sen. McCain offers plenty of change for him.

"What bothers me most with Obama, he has no experience," says the burly, tattooed, divorced father of one, who says he's working two jobs now to afford health insurance for his daughter. "I believe in change, too. But what kind of change is Obama talking about?"

Michigan is a perennial must-win for Democratic candidates, as well as a bellwether for how the party will fare in nearby Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. This week, the Obama camp launched its first television ads targeted directly at Michigan voters. One, titled "Revitalize" accuses McCain of "selling out" Michigan auto workers. Spending on TV is a tacit acknowledgment the Democrats consider Michigan competitive this year.

Michigan is home to the original "Reagan Democrats," white, working-class voters who swung Republican. Today, on paper, conditions here favor the Democrats. Unemployment stands at 8.5%, the nation's highest. Michigan's home-foreclosure rate is twice the national average, which should make it easy for Sen. Obama to campaign against a Republican who stumbled when asked how many houses he owns. Democrats have won the state in four out of the past five presidential races.

However, Sen. Obama is the one who might face an uphill battle. For starters, he chose not to participate in Michigan's primary in January -- a decision that now deprives his campaign of a ready-made network of supporters. (Michigan held its primary earlier than the national Democratic Party wanted, so Sen. Obama and several others stayed off the ballot in solidarity with the party.) At the same time, Sen. McCain plays well among moderate Republicans and independents who dislike George W. Bush, whom Sen. McCain beat handily in the party's 2000 Michigan primary.

Michigan also has some of the most complex race relations north of the Mason-Dixon line. "Michigan is a challenge for any Democratic candidate," says Amy Chapman, the head of the Obama campaign here. "Everyone thinks it's blue. But you have to work hard to make it blue."

While the Obama campaign hopes to pick up a handful of reliably Republican states like Colorado in November, the flip-side is also true: The McCain campaign could win the White House by picking off a few traditional Democratic states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Minnesota.

Losing Michigan would be a tough blow for the Democrats. In 2004's general election, George W. Bush defeated John Kerry by 286 to 251 in electoral-college votes. If Sen. McCain picks up Michigan's 17 electoral votes, Sen. Obama would then have to pick up both Colorado and Nevada simply to offset the loss of Michigan. Then, to make up the rest of Democrats' 2004 shortfall, Sen. Obama would almost certainly have to prevail in several big states the Republicans won last time, including Virginia, Missouri, Ohio or Florida.

Right now, Sen. Obama holds a slim lead in recent statewide polls. However in the crucial Detroit area (where about half of Michigan's votes will be cast) some results foreshadow trouble for the Democrats. Most important: A Detroit Free Press poll in late August showed some 30% of area voters saying that they're open to switching preferences before November -- a significantly higher figure than normal. The vast majority of these wavering voters are white, polling experts say, making the state's racial politics particularly important.

Skipping the primary here means Sen. Obama faces significant logistical hurdles. For one thing, the Obama camp has no record of precincts where he did well or poorly; those data are invaluable for focusing on weak pockets in the final stretch of the race.

The Obama camp also acknowledges that skipping the primary probably deprived Democrats of a big bump in new voter registration, which soared in places like Georgia, Ohio and North Carolina ahead of primaries there. The Obama campaign says 495,828 new Michigan voters registered this year, but after factoring in the thousands of voters who died or moved away, the newcomers barely compensate for natural attrition. Michigan's state election office counts just under 80,000 additional voters on the rolls compared to 2004. By contrast, there are over a million more voters this cycle in neighboring Ohio.

Skipping Michigan's primary also left Sen. Obama with a lot of work to do introducing himself to voters. Voters here already know and like Sen. McCain: Back in 2000, he easily won Michigan's Republican primary -- dealing Mr. Bush one of his biggest defeats of that race -- almost entirely with the votes of crossover Democrats and independents.

"A vote for McCain is a protest against the status quo," said Daniel Marsh, a longtime supporter of Sen. McCain and tax attorney who lives in Troy, Mich., echoing a theme of Sen. McCain's acceptance speech on Thursday night. Dave Lenich, a 55-year-old carpenter, says he thinks "McCain will come in and clean house."

The Obama camp vigorously argues that it can win here by staying on message -- a simple message that says eight years of Republican management have devastated Michigan's economy, and that Sen. McCain represents a continuation of, not a break from, those policies. Not only has the housing-market slump and foreclosure rate been particularly painful here, but at the same time Michigan has suffered eight years of job losses in the auto industry.

"We're not taking anything for granted," says Michigan campaign spokesman Brent Colburn. "And we're not leaving anything behind."

The Obama campaign also says its strength lies in its field staff, including 200 paid employees in 31 offices so far, well more than what the Kerry campaign deployed here four years ago. It believes it can register an additional 100,000 to 150,000 new voters between now and Michigan's Oct. 6 deadline, with up to 30,000 coming just from the Detroit area.

That raises another issue: depopulation. Detroit has been losing people faster than any other large U.S. city. That includes many black residents, likely Obama voters. More than 80,000 black Detroiters, almost 10% of the city's population, left between 2000 and 2006, the most recent figures available, according to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey.

The more dispersed Sen. Obama's Detroit support base is, the harder it will be to roll up the numbers he needs to offset Sen. McCain's areas of strength. And while television and radio ads can reach people who have migrated to the suburbs, the personal touch that helps propel voters to the polls on Election Day -- one-on-one visits from volunteers, for instance -- can be much harder to apply.

Obama campaign worker Autumn Johnson is learning how hard it is to find new voters. The Wayne State University graduate student is taking the summer off to organize in her parent's neighborhood on Detroit's rough West Side. More than 15,000 black residents have left the area in the past six years, according to Michigan United Way demographer Kurt Metzger, leaving it with a population of 92,000. Abandoned homes are visible on just about every block.

On a recent Saturday, Ms. Johnson canvassed barber shops and beauty parlors, part of the Obama campaign's "B-and-B Initiative." Pickings were slim.

At Kwanzaa Clippers on Puritan Street, Ms. Johnson found two men in chairs, but both had already registered to vote. At Linda's Perfect Cut Barber Shop nearby, she found just one person to hand a registration form to.

"I'm sorry," says Linda Harper, the 51-year-old owner. So many people have moved away, "some of my customers, I don't see them now for years, sometimes."

Some black politicians have pointed out that the Obama campaign could help itself in some urban neighborhoods by deploying what's called "street money" -- essentially, paying people to spend time cajoling folks into filling out registration forms and getting them properly filed. Payment of street money isn't illegal, but it has unsavory connotations. The Obama campaign has resisted the suggestion. "The campaign's motto is: 'This is a Volunteer Organization,' " says Ms. Chapman, the state's top organizer.

Sam Riddle, a fixture of Detroit's black political scene, scoffs at that. "Volunteer? People volunteer because they can afford to volunteer. Detroit is not Iowa. It takes street money," he says.

Mr. Riddle also says the Obama campaign is in danger of losing the election here. Race is the main reason for that, he says. Michigan is considered one of the most segregated states in the country, by virtue of the fact that its largest city, Detroit, trails only Gary, Ind., as the U.S.'s most segregated metropolitan area. Demographers say Detroit is nearly 90% segregated -- meaning, essentially, nine of 10 black residents would have to move to a white or Hispanic section of the city before racial patterns would balance out.

Pollster Mark Grebner, a Michigan Democrat, says that states where the major cities are heavily segregated (Cleveland, Ohio, is another example) tend to have bitter racial politics, and blacks and whites seldom vote along similar lines.

"Obama does not do well among whites in places with poisonous race relations," says Mr. Grebner. "Portland, Oregon, is exactly the kind of place where Obama does well among whites," whereas in Detroit, "Obama is not doing well among white people."

Bryan Capen, 36, voted for John Kerry in 2004, but last week, he turned up at a meeting of Citizens for McCain, a group Sen. McCain's campaign is using to woo Democrats and independents. "Democrats for McCain" bumper stickers were available.

Mr. Capen, a chiropractor now trying to make a living as a pianist, says he would have considered voting for Hillary Clinton this year, but not for Sen. Obama. He doesn't know enough about the Democratic nominee, "his history, his decisions," Mr. Capen says.

The recent woes of Detroit's black mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, haven't helped. The son of an African-American politician, U.S. Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, the mayor resigned this week as part of a plea bargain concerning multiple criminal charges for perjury, assault and obstruction of justice after trying to cover up a sexual liaison with a member of his staff. Mr. Kilpatrick didn't return calls seeking comment.

The long, drawn-out scandal had been a boon for Republicans in the state, thanks to a wave of unflattering stories that broke every time the mayor appeared in court. An online video highlighting Sen. Obama's speech praising Mr. Kilpatrick recently got lots of attention from Detroit newspaper columnists and talk radio.

Of Mr. Kilpatrick's troubles, Sen. McCain campaign coordinator John Yob says, "we're leaving it alone," adding "It's already out there." Figures from both parties agree that, even with his resignation, the scandal has created unflattering associations between the Democrats' nominee and Mr. Kilpatrick, whom Sen. Obama described as "a great mayor" during an NAACP event in Detroit last year, before the scandal broke.

L. Brooks Patterson, one of the state's leading Republican Party figures, says that Sen. McCain's depth of experience in the Senate and the military gives voters strong reasons to pick him over Sen. Obama. "Michigan voters want a good reason to vote for McCain so they will not be perceived as racist," Mr. Patterson says. "McCain has a lot of them."

Some people point to Michigan's 2006 vote on affirmative action as an indicator of how people might behave in the privacy of the voting booth. That year, voters strongly chose to eliminate preferences for minorities in hiring and college admissions by a 58%-42% margin. In blue-collar Macomb Country (where Democratic candidates won easily in 2006) the vote against affirmative action soared to nearly 70%.

Sen. Obama himself favors modifying affirmative action to emphasize class more than race. Still, the 2006 vote in Michigan serves as a warning to the Obama campaign in how voters' masked their feelings in pre-election polls. Steve Mitchell, who polled voters for pro-affirmative-action groups, found that support for eliminating affirmative action never topped 45% in the months before Election Day. But in the final seven days, his polling detected more and more voters changing their minds.

"As Election Day approached, voters had become more honest with themselves. They confronted how they actually felt," Mr. Mitchell says.

He draws a direct line between that outcome and this year's presidential race. "There are people today who think they can really vote for an African-American," Mr. Mitchell says, "but when they get into a ballot booth and no one is looking over their shoulders, they will decide they can't, and vote for John McCain."

By JOEL MILLMAN, The Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2008

For months John McCain has apparently been hoping to use his selection of a running mate to shake up the presidential race. By picking Alaska governor Sarah Palin, McCain has accomplished that--and very likely a lot more than that, more than he or anyone else could have imagined.

I'm not talking about the widely remarked fact that if Palin performs well, and regardless of whether McCain wins or loses, she becomes a future Republican presidential prospect. Given the end of the remarkable 28-year run of the Bush family--present on six of the last seven GOP national tickets, a record that could stand forever--and McCain's own status as a pre-baby boomer, this was baked in the cake no matter what younger Republican politician McCain chose to elevate.

But even apart from its political implications, the rollout of the Sarah Palin vice presidential candidacy may be regarded decades from now as a nationally shared Rorschach test of enormous cultural significance.

From the instant of Palin's designation on Friday, August 29, the American left went into a collective mass seizure from which it shows no sign of emerging. The left blogosphere and elite media have, for the moment, joined forces and become indistinguishable from each other, and from the supermarket tabloids, in their desire to find and use anything that will criminalize and/or humiliate Palin and her family. In sharp contrast to the yearlong restraint shown toward truthful reports about John Edwards's affair, bizarre rumors have been reported as news, and, according to McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt, nationally known members of the elite media have besieged him with preposterous demands.

The most striking thing in purely political terms about this hurricane of elite rage is the built-in likelihood that it will backfire. It's not simply that it is highly capable of generating sympathy for Palin among puzzled undecided voters and of infuriating and motivating a previously placid GOP base, neither of which is in the interest of the Obama-Biden campaign. It also created an opening for Palin herself to look calm, composed, competent, and funny in response.

In her acceptance speech last Wednesday night, anyone could see the poise and skill that undoubtedly attracted McCain's attention months ago, when few others were even aware that he was looking. But it was precisely the venom of the left's assault that heightened the drama and made it a riveting television event. Palin benefited from her ability to project full awareness of the volume and relentlessness of the attacks without showing a scintilla of resentment or self-pity.

This is a rare talent, one shared by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. For this quality to have even a chance to develop, there must be something real to serve as an emotional backdrop: disproportionate, crazy-seeming rage by one's political enemies. Roosevelt was on his party's national ticket five times and Reagan sought the presidency four times. Each became governor of what at the time was the nation's most populous state. It took Roosevelt and Reagan decades of national prominence and pitched ideological combat to achieve the gift of enemies like these. Yet the American left awarded Sarah Palin this gift seemingly within a microsecond of her appearance on the national stage in Dayton, Ohio. Why?

The most important thing to know about the left today is that it is centered on social issues. At root, it always has been, ever since the movement took form and received its name in the revolutionary Paris of the 1790s. In order to drive toward a vision of true human liberation, all the institutions and moral codes we associate with civilization had to be torn down. The institutions targeted in revolutionary France included the monarchy and the nobility, but even higher on the enemies list of the Jacobins and their allies were organized religion and the family, institutions in which the moral values of traditional society could be preserved and passed on outside the control of the leftist vanguard.

Full human liberation always remained the ultimate vision of the left--Marx, for one, was explicit on this point--but the left in its more than 200-year history has been flexible and adaptable in the forms it was willing to assume and the projects it was willing to undertake in pursuit of its anti-institutional goals. For more than a hundred years, the central project of the global left was socialism.

It's hard to credit today, but as recently as the 1940s most Western political elites believed government ownership of business and national planning were the keys to economic modernization. Even when socialism's economic prestige was eroded by the West's capitalist boom after World War II, socialism retained credibility as a means of income redistribution.

It was the turbulent 1960s that proved a strategic turning point for the left. The worldwide social and cultural upheavals that culminated in 1968 were felt as a crisis of confidence by institutions in the West. Some institutions (universities, for example) defected to the rebels, while others saw their centuries-long influence on the population greatly weaken or drain away virtually overnight.

In the short run, most political elites weathered the storm. A big reason, the left gradually realized, was that socialist economics had become an albatross. Increasingly, the democratic parties of the left in Western countries downplayed socialism or even decoupled from it, leaving them free to pursue the anti-institutional, relativistic moral crusade that has been in the DNA of the left all along.

This newly revitalized social and cultural agenda made it possible for the left to shrug off the collapse of European communism and the Soviet Union nearly two decades ago. Even in countries like China where the Communist party retained dictatorial power, socialist economics became a thing of the past. Attempts to suppress religion and limit the autonomy of the family did not.

For the post-1960s, post-socialist left, the single most important breakthrough has been the alliance between modern feminism and the sexual revolution. This was far from inevitable. Up until around 1960, attempts at sexual liberation were resisted by most educated women. In the wake of the success of Playboy and other mass-circulation pornographic magazines in the 1950s, men were depicted as the initiators and main beneficiaries of sexual liberation, women as intolerant of promiscuity as well as potential victims of predatory "liberated" men.

With the introduction of the Pill around 1960, things abruptly began to change. Fears of overpopulation legitimated a contraceptive ethic throughout middle-class society in North America, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet bloc. China, which discouraged contraception and welcomed population gains under Mao Zedong, flipped to the extreme of the One Child policy in 1979, shortly after pro-capitalist reformers took charge and fixed on strict population control as an integral and unquestioned part of the package of Western-style development.

The fact that the Pill was taken only by women gave them a greater feeling of control over their sexual activity and eroded their social and psychological resistance to premarital sex. "No fault" divorce, a term borrowed from the field of auto insurance, in reality amounted to unilateral divorce and began to undermine the idea of marriage as a binding mutual contract oriented toward the procreation and nurturing of children. Contrary to nearly every prediction, the ubiquity of far more reliable methods of contraception and the growing ideological separation of sex from reproduction, coincided with a huge increase in unwed pregnancies.

Though earlier versions of feminism tended to embrace children and elevate motherhood, the more adversarial feminism that gained a mass base in virtually every affluent democracy beginning in the 1970s preached that children and childbearing were the central instrumentality of men's subjugation of women. This more than anything else in the menu of the post-socialist left raised toward cultural consensus a vision in which the monogamous family was what prevented humanity from achieving a Rousseau-like "natural" state of freedom from all laws and all bonds of mutual obligation.

If this analysis is correct, the single most important narrative holding the left together in today's politics and culture is the one offered--often with little or no dissent--by adversarial feminism. The premise of this narrative is that for women to achieve dignity and self-fulfillment in modern society, they must distance themselves, not necessarily from men or marriage or childbearing, but from the kind of marriage in which a mother's temptation to be with and enjoy several children becomes a synonym for holding women back and cheating them out of professional success.

On August 29, in the immediate aftermath of the announcement by the McCain campaign, all that was widely known of the governor of Alaska was that she was married with five children, the last one of whom had been carried to term with Down syndrome, and that she was pro-life. No one knew that her oldest daughter was pregnant. No one knew much about what she had done as governor or in her previous career. No one knew how she had been drawn into politics, or that her sister had had a reckless husband and a contentious divorce. Above all, with the possible exception of John McCain, no one knew that Sarah Palin was both a married mother of five and a brilliant political talent with a chance not just to change the dynamics of the 2008 election but to rise to the top level of American politics, whatever happens this year.

The simple fact of her being a pro-life married mother of five with a thriving political career was--before anything else about her was known--enough for the left and its outliers to target her for destruction. She could not be allowed to contradict symbolically one of the central narratives of the left. How galling it will be to Sarah Palin's many new enemies if she survives this assault and prevails. If she does, her success may be an important moment in the struggle to shape not just America's politics but its culture.

By Jeffrey Bell, The Weekly Standard, September 15, 2008

Perhaps the most delightfully candid assessment of Palin's dismal lack of experience came from Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. During an off-camera moment on MSNBC, Noonan, a former Reagan

Sarah Palin is a woman. Hillary Clinton is a woman. Women just love voting for other women. Women candidates are interchangeable. Therefore, women who would have voted for Clinton are obviously going to vote for Palin.

If this syllogism strikes you as stupid, that's because it is. Not to mention cynical and not a little bit sexist. Yet it also appears to be one of the reasons behind John McCain's choice of a running mate.

Oh, lots of alternative explanations for his decision are floating around: McCain chose Palin because her staunch anti-abortion stance bolsters his case among Christian conservatives; he chose her because she personifies youthful energy while he, well, doesn't. Possibly the Palin decision was a big Bronx cheer meant for strategist Karl Rove, who pushed hard for Mitt Romney (over Joe Lieberman, McCain's rumored first choice). Then again, maybe the Republican candidate for president of the United States plucked his running mate from relative obscurity because he's desperate for the moose-hunting vote. (But really, who isn't?)

Setting aside for a moment the political clout of America's moose-hunting bloc, let's take a closer look at one of the more plausible reasons behind McCain's peculiar pick: He's tipping his cap and winking at disconsolate Clinton supporters, hoping he'll pick up a few all-important Lady Votes from the pool of Still Undecideds who monitored last week's events in Denver but remain unconverted - and unconvinced.

Let's be honest: If McCain really wanted to wow Evangelical voters, he could have gone with any one of the roughly 87 Republicans currently in national office whose politics are virtually indistinguishable from Palin's. If his goal was to lower the average age of the GOP ticket, the only real requirement is that the candidate be alive. So why on earth would he overlook dozens of far more qualified candidates (Tim Pawlenty and Lieberman, for example) only to choose Palin, whose national experience could be described (kindly) as negligible?

Because Palin's a woman. And because Rove, currently serving as an "informal adviser" to McCain's campaign, once read a book about women that convinced him the only thing women love more than a good white sale is casting a vote for another woman. (OK, I just made that up. I have no idea whether Karl Rove has ever read a book).

Here's something McCain might have considered during the 45 minutes his aides apparently spent vetting Palin, whose slowly expanding biography keeps yielding unpleasant surprises: Women aren't interested in voting for just any woman. They want to vote for an experienced, competent woman whose accomplishments can stand up to any man's, not someone they have to make excuses for. ("Oh, you'll have to excuse her lack of understanding of NATO's operational plan in Afghanistan. She's a woman.") Hence the allure of Hillary Clinton, whose positions - whether you agreed with them or not - have been articulated clearly (and often at stupefying length) over the years.

Palin, who has been governor of Alaska for about a year and a half, has clear positions on policy issues related to her adopted state (Drill in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Yes, please! Put polar bears on the endangered species list? No, thanks! Rack up $27 million in federal earmarks for her hometown of Wasilla? Oooh, yes!).

She's rock solid on conservative hot-button social issues (pro-life, pro-gun, pro-abstinence-only sex education). But when it comes to issues with national or international implications, Palin can rest easy. She won't be called on to defend a single position, mainly because she doesn't appear to have any.

Publicly, the GOP faithful is rallying around Palin, but scratch the surface, and you'll find rumblings of discontent - and even disbelief - over McCain's choice. Perhaps the most delightfully candid assessment of Palin's dismal lack of experience came from Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. During an off-camera moment on MSNBC, Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter, was asked whether the Alaska governor is the most qualified woman McCain could have chosen. Her blunt response: "The most qualified? No. I think they went for this - excuse me - political bull . . . about narratives."

Back in the public (on-camera) realm, Republicans have spent the last 10 days hurling charges of sexism at the so-called "liberal" media. Given that this is the same party that has dedicated the last two years to attacking Hillary Clinton based on little more than her gender, the GOP's newfound respect for women feels hugely disingenuous.

And the Republican case is not helped by Palin's nomination, which fairly reeks of sexism.

Women, the Republican Party seems to be saying, are interchangeable. Worried about a weak ticket? Concerned about voters losing interest? Just stick a woman in there. Pretty much any woman will do. And by choosing Sarah Palin above the dozens of far more qualified women in their party (Sens. Olympia Snowe and Kay Bailey Hutchison, to name just two), John McCain and the Republicans have exposed every future female candidate to the same creeping, dangerous suspicion feminists have been fighting since the first female politician stepped forward: She's at that podium for all the wrong reasons: novelty, or shock value, or because her X chromosomes make her a politically expedient choice. Not because she's the best person for the job.

By Jessica Reaves, Chicago Tribune, September 7, 2008

Sarah Palin looks good from this family's living room.

Sure, I spent much of the last week in a state of apoplexy at the hypocrisy and cynicism of the political process in general and the Republican Party in particular. But I can't say those were the very first thoughts that came to mind when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was introduced to the world Aug. 29.

Instead, I thought about one of my closest friends.

Kimberly Speranza is not only emblematic of the kind of religious conservative voter Palin was tapped to "energize," she's uncannily similar to "Sarah Barracuda." Raised in rural, working-class Nebraska, Kim's a veteran snowmobiler, has hunted pheasant, slopped hogs and butchered and cleaned chickens, and worked as a corporate executive. She's also an devout evangelical Christian who, like Palin, does not believe in Darwinian evolution. Although she'll be the first to tell you she's not an intellectual, she's bright, energetic and as curious about the world as anyone I know. She also happens to wear her hair piled on top of her head exactly the way Palin does.

Kim, who's 42, lives in Palos Verdes with her husband, Scott, 41, and their 3-year-old twins. They've been longtime Bush supporters, though when I saw Kim a few months ago, she told me she was finally fed up with the current administration. She also said that neither she nor Scott were fans of John McCain, and that they felt there was no Republican candidate who represented their interests and values. She did, however, express respect and admiration for Sen. Barack Obama. And although she didn't come out and say she would vote for him, she didn't say she wouldn't.

Considering that over the years we've both nearly choked on our Chinese chicken salads arguing with each other over lunch, this was extraordinary to hear. But that was before Palin came along.

On Wednesday, I called Kim and invited myself over to watch Palin's acceptance speech. Their living room, after all, seemed like the closest I could get to the conservative base.

"We're energized," Scott said as we sat down to dinner before the speech. "Honestly, I might not have voted before this. But now I feel like it's 'game on.' The Democrats had an advantage in that Obama is a gifted speaker and incredibly appealing to his base. That was missing from our side. Now I at least feel like there's an equal playing field."

"Exactly," Kim said. "She reminds me of my grandmother, who worked on the farm and could hunt and grow food and raise kids and have two of them die and still go on. You don't see that in politics a lot, and you don't get it from going to Harvard, but that doesn't mean it's not valid."

The Speranzas work in the health insurance industry, get their news from National Public Radio as well as Fox and CNN, and describe their religious affiliation as "evangelical and as far right in the Christian right as you can go." And although Kim says she supports abstinence being taught in schools alongside traditional sex education (ditto for creationism and evolution), she and Scott both say Palin makes them feel as if they have a voice in the political arena.

As for Palin's special-needs infant, pregnant teenage daughter and the sudden emergence of the future son-in-law with an expletive-laced MySpace page that declared his lack of interest in fatherhood, the Speranzas say Palin's willingness to cope with her flaws makes voters like them love her more. "Look, I'd certainly think twice about the family consequences of running for office," said Kim. "She has an entirely different sense of her own boundaries than most people. She's almost like a superhero. Though she does have my hair."

As for Palin's speech, we all agreed it was "incredible," though they meant it as a compliment, whereas I was reminded of Nicole Kidman's role in the movie "To Die For," in which she plays an aspiring TV personality who murders her way to the top.

"What if she ends up becoming president?" I asked.

"It would concern me," said Scott. "But less than if Obama were president."

We also agreed that the take-away scene was one of the more surreal in recent political history: The Palin family, baby bump and all, waving from the convention stage to a crowd so adoring you'd think it was a Peter Frampton concert.

"That family is so American," Scott said. "The pregnant daughter, the baby with Down syndrome, the husband who doesn't have as big a career as his wife."

"The boyfriend with the embarrassing MySpace page," Kim added. "That's real life! Go Sarah Barracuda!"

Game on, folks.




By Meghan Daum, Los Angeles Times, September 6, 2008

ST. PAUL - Senator Barack Obama will increasingly lean on prominent Democratic women to undercut Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator John McCain, dispatching Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida on Monday and bolstering his plan to deploy female surrogates to battleground states, Obama advisers said Thursday.

Mrs. Clinton's campaign event in Florida, her first for Mr. Obama since the Democratic convention, will serve as a counterpoint to the searing attacks and fresh burst of energy that Ms. Palin injected into the race with her convention speech on Wednesday, Obama aides said.

With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Obama aides said they were counting on not only Mrs. Clinton but also Democratic female governors to rebut Ms. Palin - and, by extension, Mr. McCain. Those governors include Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas.

Still, within the Obama campaign and among Democratic officials nationwide, talks are well under way about how the party should treat Ms. Palin in the campaign - and what Mr. Obama and his running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., need to do to regain the offensive after the Republican convention.

Some Democrats were urging Mr. Obama's campaign not to underestimate the potential power of Ms. Palin's speech, even among voters not aligned with either party: On liberal talk-radio shows and on left-leaning blogs, some Democrats said the Obama campaign should fight back hard to avoid being caricatured as Senator John Kerry was four years ago when he ran against President Bush. Some party strategists warned that Mrs. Palin's personal narrative as a "hockey mom" with a special-needs child, would appeal to some undecided women voters.

"What McCain has done with Governor Palin's nomination is aim right at a demographic that Obama needs to address quickly: noncollege-educated women," said Mike McCurry, a former spokesman in the Clinton White House. "They need to maximize Biden's ability to reach out to them, but at the end of the day, it is Obama who has to get that very, very critical group."

Advisers to Mr. Obama predicted that the buzz over Ms. Palin would fade and that the race would quickly turn back into a contest between Senators McCain and Obama, despite the McCain campaign's efforts to compare Mr. Obama's experience unfavorably to Ms. Palin's. At the same time, even as Democratic researchers pore over Ms. Palin's record in Alaska, a rapid response team is being created in Chicago to dispatch female surrogates around the country.

David Axelrod, the Obama campaign's chief political strategist, said Mr. Obama would not raise questions about Ms. Palin's experience. Mr. Axelrod said the campaign would work instead to impress upon voters the seriousness of the race and continue to try to link the McCain-Palin team to President Bush.

While Mr. Obama did not aggressively challenge Ms. Palin, his advisers opened a new line of criticism to brand her as part of the Republican establishment.

"For someone who makes the point that she's not from Washington, she looked very much like she'd fit in very well there when you see how she brings the attacks," Mr. Axelrod said. "They all felt very familiar to Americans who are used to this kind of thing from Washington."

Advisers to Mrs. Clinton said that she stood ready to help the Obama-Biden ticket, but they urged the campaign not to overestimate the impact Mrs. Clinton could have, noting that she had other commitments this fall, like campaigning and raising money for Senate candidates. Obama aides said the Clinton trip had been in the works before Ms. Palin was named the running mate.

Still, Mo Elleithee, a Clinton spokesman, said he believed she could make a difference with some voters who feel lost in the current economy and who want to see a federal role enacting universal health insurance.

"Anyone who was inclined to support Hillary Clinton typically did so because of her focus on middle-class, bread-and-butter issues," Mr. Elleithee said. "Her message for Barack Obama on those issues could certainly help the Democratic ticket at the ballot box."

The Obama camp also plans to keep Mr. Biden campaigning steadily in swing states. Obama advisers said that one advantage they had was that Mr. Biden, as a six-term senator and former presidential candidate, is well-prepared for his single debate with Ms. Palin, in October.

With both conventions seen largely as successes for their tickets, the importance of the three presidential debates - the first of which is Sept. 26 - and the one vice-presidential debate become even more crucial for either side to gain a political advantage, Democratic strategists and elected officials said.

Mr. Obama, speaking to reporters on Thursday at a campaign stop in York, Pa., brushed aside any worry that he might have about Ms. Palin's criticism of his biography and political record in her convention speech.

"I've been called worse on the basketball court, so it's not that big of a deal," he said.

Yet Ms. Palin seemed to be on Mr. Obama's mind. At a rally in Lancaster, Pa., Mr. Obama asked an audience of several thousand people if they had "caught any of the performances" at the Republican convention.

Mr. Obama did not mention Ms. Palin by name, but added, "They may have found some new faces to present their message, but it's the same old message."

By Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times, September 4, 2008

Penko and Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred circulated a petition for a full roll call vote. They couldn't round up enough signatures.

Allred, a Clinton delegate well known in Southern California for her public-relations flair, grew frustrated last week with what she saw as efforts to muzzle her and showed up at a delegation breakfast one morning with a gag made up of restaurant napkins.

She's still not happy with what transpired at the Democratic gathering. "This was a scripted convention," she said this week. "There really was no room for dissent for Hillary supporters. Not even room for discussion."




By Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2008

John McCain's running mate shakes off controversy and mocks Barack Obama in her introduction to the nation.

ST. PAUL, MINN. -- Sarah Palin, who vaulted from obscurity to controversy as the Republican candidate for vice president, cast herself Wednesday night as a reformer and a fighter, gleefully tearing into Democrat Barack Obama.

Making her prime-time TV debut, the Alaska governor mixed a homey account of domestic life in the frontier wilderness with barbed attacks that left no doubt about her relish for political combat.

"This is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform -- not even in the state Senate," she said of the Democrats' presidential nominee. "This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word 'victory' except when he's talking about his own campaign."

She mocked the elaborate stage set of Obama's acceptance speech last week and the presidential-type seal his campaign used once, pressing GOP assertions that Obama's candidacy is little more than a vainglorious tilt at celebrity.

"When the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot, what exactly is our opponent's plan?" she asked, to a roar from delegates at the Republican National Convention. "What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger, take more of your money, give you more orders from Washington and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world."

Greeted by a thunderous ovation lasting nearly three minutes, Palin sought to turn recent negative publicity to her advantage, casting herself as a victim of hostile reporters and a scornful Washington establishment. "Here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators," she said. "I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this great country."

She defended her relative lack of political experience -- four years as mayor of the small town of Wasilla and less than two years as Alaska governor -- by swiping at Obama and one of his first jobs out of college. "Since our opponents in the presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves," Palin said of her years at City Hall. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

She also took after Obama for his unguarded remark at a San Francisco fundraiser that small-town Americans, embittered by tough times, seek refuge in guns and religion. "We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco," she said.

She vouched for John McCain in a series of laudatory passages. Looking into the TV cameras, she urged Americans: "Take the maverick of the Senate and put him in the White House."

Virtually unknown outside of Alaska a week ago, Palin was the unquestioned star on the third night of the hurricane-shortened convention. Delegates cheered her long and lustily, a stark contrast to the media hazing she has faced amid embarrassing personal and political revelations.

Afterward, she was joined onstage by her family and, unexpectedly, McCain, who was drowned out with affirmative cheers when he hollered, "Don't you think we made the right choice for the next vice president of the United States? And what a beautiful family!"

At the end of the night, after TV's prime time, McCain was formally nominated in a suspense-free roll call vote.

Before Palin took the stage, the McCain campaign was on the offense. Steve Schmidt, McCain's chief strategist, issued a statement saying officials would no longer answer questions about the vice presidential selection process, suggesting reporters were out to "destroy the first female Republican nominee." Hours later, a group of GOP women held a contentious news conference in which they accused the media of unfair and sexist reporting.

"So many women around this country appreciate the way that Sarah Palin brings a broad and very diverse footing and foundation of experience to play," said Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. "Every woman in this room knows that if you can handle being a room mother . . . a PTA chairman, a Girl Scout cookie mom, there are a lot of things you have the ability, the organizational skills to handle."

McCain, who has pursued the GOP presidential nomination for nearly a decade, arrived Wednesday to claim his prize. Bounding off his chartered 737, he was greeted by the McCain and Palin families. Also on hand was Levi Johnston, 18, the fiance of Bristol Palin, the governor's 17-year-old pregnant daughter. McCain hugged Bristol, then put his arms around the young couple.

Inside the convention hall, the program turned from Tuesday's testimonials to an emphasis on policy, with promises to cut taxes, streamline government, expand domestic energy production -- "Drill, baby, drill!" the crowd repeatedly roared -- and, above all, overhaul the way Washington does business. Speakers sought to sap Obama's most potent political weapon: the promise of change.

"You know, many people talk about changing Washington," said Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard head and a McCain economic advisors. "John McCain has the knowledge, the guts and now, in Sarah Palin, the partner he needs to actually get it done."

Three former McCain rivals joined the chorus, blaming Democrats for everything wrong with Washington, though the party has been out of power for much of the last eight years. There was virtually no mention of President Bush.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said the federal government had been "looking to the Eastern elites" for guidance. "We need change all right," he said. "Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington."

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee offered a nod to the historic nature of Obama's candidacy, then fell in with the night's theme. "John McCain doesn't want the kind of change that allows the government to reach deeper into your paycheck and pick your doctor, your child's school, or even the kind of car you drive or how much you inflate the tires," he said. The latter was an allusion to Obama's suggestion that motorists save energy by keeping their tires properly inflated.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani , his voice tinged with sarcasm, questioned Obama's experience and judgment, saying "the safety and security" of the U.S. is at stake. "The choice in this election comes down to substance over style," he said. "John has been tested. Barack Obama has not. Tough times require strong leadership, and this is no time for on-the-job training."

But all the oratory was just a warm-up for the week's most anticipated speaker.

Palin's ascent to the national stage has been rapid and rocky, which may have made her more sympathetic to the party faithful crammed into St. Paul's downtown sports arena. She was unveiled as McCain's surprise pick Friday. She soon went into seclusion amid unflattering reports, including accounts of her pursuit of pork-barrel projects and an investigation into her firing of Alaska's public safety commissioner. The campaign also announced her daughter's pregnancy and confirmed that her husband was once arrested on drunken driving charges.

Palin may have been referring to the last few days when she said, "Our family has the same ups and downs as any other . . . the same challenges and the same joys."

She spoke lovingly of her husband and five children, the oldest of whom will soon deploy to Iraq. Palin drew a big laugh when she described herself as just "an average hockey mom," with this qualifier: The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is "lipstick."

She then talked of how as a governor she "shook things up": selling the state's private jet, firing the governor's personal chef, taking on corrupt politicians and fighting oil and gas companies (though she did not mention that the fight was over raising their taxes).

"I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit," Palin said, "as vice president of the United States."




By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2008

The hard work will come when the Republican vice presidential nominee sets off on her own. Yet to be resolved are family and political issues.

ST. PAUL, MINN. -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was an untraditional choice for the Republican ticket, but her acceptance speech Wednesday suggested that she will play a very traditional role as a vice presidential nominee: leading her party's attack against the other side.

"You know what they say's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick," she said, flashing a mauve smile.

Palin delivered the most important speech of her career with poise and pugnacity, extolling Republican presidential candidate John McCain as "an upright and honorable man" while throwing repeated jabs at Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

"We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers . . . but listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform," she said. "This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word 'victory' except when he's talking about his own campaign."

But Wednesday was the easy part. Palin, who once worked as a television sportscaster and was known in Alaska as an effective speaker, was talking to a friendly audience that welcomed her criticisms of Obama. And she was using a well-polished text, drafted by campaign speechwriters and tested in rehearsals over several days.

The more difficult test, Republican strategists said, lies ahead -- in unscripted interviews, campaign appearances and a debate with her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, on Oct. 8.

"I think they've set a pretty low bar for her," said former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, arguing that as long as Palin doesn't commit a major gaffe she will be "a significant asset" to his party's ticket.

Supporters were buoyant after the speech. "She hit it out of the park. She cleared every bar," said Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1996. "Republicans ought to be very happy about how she framed the race . . . that Obama wants to raise taxes and McCain wants to lessen government."

"It was a good speech," agreed Tad Devine, a strategist for John F. Kerry's unsuccessful Democratic bid in 2004. But, he added, "it was a good speech for the partisan Republican base. I don't think it spoke much to swing voters. . . . She didn't really go into the economic issues that are a driving issue in this election."

The campaign's immediate goal, a senior McCain advisor said, is to help Palin "settle in" to her role as a national candidate and hope the tempest of media stories subsides. They include controversies over her firing of subordinates and seeking federal money for local projects as well as the surprise announcement that one of her unmarried daughters is pregnant.

"People pay attention to a vice presidential nominee only at the convention and the debate," said the advisor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the issue. "She's only interesting if she [messes] up."

After the convention concludes today, McCain and Palin are expected to campaign together Friday. Later, Palin will go to battleground states including Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the advisor said, as part of a strategy aimed at increasing the enthusiasm, activism and turnout of conservative voters, a gambit similar to George W. Bush's 2004 presidential campaign, which won in part by turning out record numbers of Republican voters.

McCain strategists also hoped Palin's nomination and her personal story would appeal to women, including moderate Democrats who voted for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in her unsuccessful bid for her party's presidential nomination. Palin is the first woman nominated on a Republican ticket.

"McCain and Palin don't need to win over all Hillary Clinton voters," said Dan Schnur, a McCain advisor during the 2000 presidential campaign. "Just a subset."

But current advisors acknowledged that the evidence is not yet clear whether that strategy will work. A CBS News Poll released Wednesday found that 60% of voters polled this week did not know enough about Palin to have a view of her.

That means Palin has plenty of room to win voters' support -- or to alienate them if significant negative information surfaces about her.

As for the torrent of media stories about Palin over the last five days, most Republicans at the convention don't think they come anywhere close to disqualifying her from the ticket.

"You haven't mentioned anything that amounts to anything," Thompson said.

But they acknowledge that the more important issue is whether the Palin controversies prompt voters to draw adverse conclusions about McCain, either that he made a bad choice or that he chose the Alaska governor without sufficient vetting.

Attacking the media has become an open, systematic part of the campaign's strategy.

On Wednesday morning, the campaign released a statement from strategist Steve Schmidt denouncing "a faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republican nominee for vice president of the United States who has never been a part of the old boys' network that has come to dominate the news establishment in this country."

Then the campaign arranged a news conference for prominent Republican women to denounce what they called unfair media accounts of Palin's record as governor.

"The Republican Party will not stand by while Sarah Palin is subjected to sexist attacks," said former Hewlett Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina.

"All of us up here have been subjected to the stereotype of show horse, not workhorse," Fiorina said. "They are trying to treat her as a show horse, to say 'nice little girl, nice show horse, but not qualified.' "

Palin didn't complain about sexism in her speech, but she did say: "I'm not going to Washington to seek [the media's] good opinion; I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country."

"The media are now part of the McCain campaign plan," the senior McCain advisor said. "The tactic is to make the media part of what we're running against. . . . The media are less popular than the Congress."

Thompson, a veteran of decades of political campaigns, said he wasn't surprised by the volume and intensity of the media's Palin coverage.

"She's the only story in town," he said, shrugging.

But he added that a tussle with the media can often leave a candidate stronger -- if the candidate survives.

"I think this is probably inuring to her benefit," he said.




By Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2008

Controversy over daughter Bristol Palin's pregnancy gave Republicans an opportunity to rail at the media Wednesday night.

The night formerly known as Night Three of the Republican National Convention was dedicated to "Reform and Prosperity." But more important, it was the party's, and the country's, first substantial look at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who in no time at all has become not only a national politician but a subject of controversy and a figure of symbolic import.

She was the night's story, down to how well she would handle speaking off a teleprompter: "But we will see, because we're open-minded about what we're going to be anticipating," CNN's Wolf Blitzer said.

Far from being a drag on the event, the unexpected news of the Bristol Palin pregnancy was a gift, both to the party and to the press. It turned a spotlight on a favorite Republican enemy: "the media," which were castigated, a little more than they deserved, for making a story out of a story. And it gave the press, which had been expecting a dull convention, both a narrative to exploit and another chance to talk about itself.

Mitt Romney led the parade of former opponents who preceded Palin. He was dour and a little belligerent. Mike Huckabee followed, measured and humorous and lightly pastoral. He opened with a good joke: "I am genuinely delighted to speak here on behalf of my second choice for the Republican nomination for president."

Rudy Giuliani's subsequent stand-up routine had a different, distinctly acid tone; even his statement that Barack Obama's rise was "remarkable" played as a knock. (Never have the words "community organizer" been pronounced with such distaste as they were Wednesday night in St. Paul.) He was interrupted frequently by chants of "USA" and other things I couldn't make out.

Palin followed Giuliani immediately, her introductory video nixed to save time. It was expendable, in any case, as her speech comprised both a family album and an elucidation of her record. She did just fine with the teleprompter, given the speed with which she was hustled into this position. It was an impressively assured performance, both friendly for the folks and brutal for the ranks.

When Palin was joined at the end by McCain and her extremely handsome family -- that he looks like Grandpa in that mix is possibly not a bad thing -- it was hard to see how she could be anything but an asset to the campaign.




By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2008

Outside the convention hall, questions are raised about the pro-life working mother's family responsibilities.

ST. PAUL, MINN. -- The topic was Sen. John McCain's vice presidential pick, and talk show host Laura Ingraham was on a roll. Accepting an award from the Republican National Coalition for Life on behalf of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was under wraps working on her convention speech, Ingraham chastised anyone who would suggest that Palin is not up to the job.
"The mom part of me says how did this woman expect to run for vice president with a 4-month-old baby with a disability and a 17-year-old about to have a baby of her own?" said Debra Haffner, a Unitarian minister and sex educator from Westport, Conn., who has educated parents on teenage sexuality for nearly three decades. "It's not a feminist perspective . . . but there are times when you put your professional aspirations on hold, and this seems like it might be one of them."

She said she thinks Palin has brought such scrutiny on herself. "I think when you keep proudly saying 'I'm a hockey mom of five' . . . you open your own parenting practice up for consideration."

Palin has raised the issue herself. In 2004, she told the Anchorage Daily News that she decided not to run for the U.S. Senate because her teenage son opposed it.

"How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. senator?" she asked.

Talking with reporters Monday, McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt took offense at the idea that Palin might have trouble juggling the vice presidency and her family obligations.

"Frankly," he said, "I can't imagine that question being asked of a man. I think it's offensive, and I think a lot of women will find it offensive."

In an interview Wednesday with Katie Couric, prospective first lady Cindy McCain defended Palin and echoed Schmidt: "She will be a marvelous vice president, and she is already a marvelous mother. . . . I think most of the people asking the questions wouldn't be asking this if it were a man."

Later, Cindy McCain nodded strenuously when the Wednesday keynote speaker, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, reacted with outrage to the question of Palin's balancing act.

"When do they ever ask a man that question?" he asked.

In fact, the question was asked of a man in March 2007, when John Edwards, the father of two school-aged children and an adult daughter, announced that his wife, Elizabeth, had terminal cancer. He continued to pursue the Democratic presidential nomination, which sparked a national conversation about whether a man confronting the death of a spouse and single fatherhood would be able to meet the demands of the presidency.

At the time, one Republican strategist said that Elizabeth Edwards' illness would put a strain on her husband's ability to wage a campaign.

"The political marketplace may conclude that he may not be viable because of the distraction," he said.

Others look no further than the Democratic ticket for evidence that family strains -- even grievous ones -- can coexist with federal office.

"Look at Joe Biden," said Deborah Roffman, a Baltimore human sexuality educator. "His life story involved child care too." Biden's wife and young daughter were killed in a car crash in 1972, just after he was elected, at age 29, to the Senate. His two sons were severely injured in the accident. Biden was sworn into office at their bedside, and his schedule accommodated their recovery needs. Eventually, he ended up commuting daily between Wilmington, Del., and Washington.

Debbie Walsh, director for the Rutgers Center for the American Woman and Politics, said Palin had already been caught in a bind between her political obligations and her family. That happened when she and her husband, Todd, issued a news release announcing that their daughter Bristol was pregnant.

"It's terrible, like a Sophie's choice situation, where you are in this horrible position as a mother," said Walsh, "to feel that you have to reveal this piece of information about your daughter and not just to a few people in your family but to the national press corps?"

Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist, agreed that the parenting questions came up more readily for Palin because she is a woman.

"I'm all for being a working mom," Schwartz said. "But I do have a sense from having two children how totally unsuited and uncapable I would be with five."

But Phyllis Schlafly, the 84-year-old archetypal anti-feminist, thinks people fretting about whether Palin can do it all should just pipe down.

"People who don't have children, or who only have one or two, don't comprehend what it's like to have five," said Schlafly, who was on the convention floor this week.

"I had six children," Schlafly said. "I ran for Congress. An organized mother puts it all together. The time management mother uses the older ones to help with the younger ones. You should read that old book 'Cheaper by the Dozen.' "




By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2008

Details emerge one after another, and the campaign can't be sure what will capture and hold public interest.

ST. PAUL, MINN. -- Only four days ago, the nation's voters were asked to accept John McCain's assurances that Sarah Palin, known to only a tiny portion of the public and barely to McCain himself, was fully suited to be vice president.

But now the magnitude of McCain's gamble is becoming clear.

For every piece of the portrait of Palin that the McCain campaign sketches, a far more complicated picture of the Alaska governor is drawn.

The youthful mother of five whose placement on the ticket was meant to reinforce traditional values has now revealed that her unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant -- a piece of information that the family and the campaign said they had hoped to keep private.

The woman introduced to America as a reform-minded Washington outsider who opposed the infamous "bridge to nowhere" -- the symbol of McCain's hatred of wasteful spending -- originally supported its construction. The governor who in her introductory speech decried the practice of budgetary "earmarks" sought, as the state's chief executive and as mayor of Wasilla, hundreds of millions of dollars in such federal funding for local projects.

Moreover, Palin has now retained a lawyer to represent her in a controversy the McCain campaign said it had fully researched -- Palin's role in dismissing a state police official who had refused to fire a trooper who divorced Palin's sister.

On Monday, the McCain campaign dispatched lawyers to Alaska in a move described as an attempt to manage a growing crowd of journalists who have traveled there to inspect Palin's background. But the move raises the impression that the McCain campaign didn't know everything about his No. 2 and is now racing to learn what it can while trying to avoid tough questions about the Arizona senator's decision-making process.

"I really hope McCain did his homework," said David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush. "I cannot stifle a growing sense of unease that he didn't."

A former McCain advisor, Mike Murphy, said Monday that it remained an open question whether "the running mate in a good or bad way becomes a window into the skills of the nominee."

Most dangerous of all, McCain's team does not seem to know what new development, if any, might grab the public's attention.

One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate's closest supporters as "keeping their fingers crossed" in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin's potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain's short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.

The unease comes as Palin, 44, prepares for her next big public test: a prime-time, nationally televised speech Wednesday at the Republican National Convention.

She will no doubt receive an enthusiastic welcome from delegates and party activists who continued Monday to express unqualified excitement about Palin's presence on the ticket.

As a staunch opponent of abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, Palin has invigorated religious conservatives and other members of the GOP base who have been cool to McCain's candidacy and reluctant to work for the campaign with the same verve that fueled President Bush's 2004 reelection.

And the speech by Palin is shaping up as a dramatic moment in a convention that has been muted by Hurricane Gustav.

Although grass-roots Republicans remain protective of Palin, the campaign has clearly moved from celebratory mode into a full defensive posture.

Critics continue to question why McCain, after months of assailing Democratic nominee Barack Obama as lacking foreign policy experience, would tap a running mate who has been governor for less than two years and before that was mayor of Wasilla, population 7,000.

McCain's wife, Cindy, told an interviewer over the weekend that Alaska's proximity to Russia bolstered Palin's credentials, and Palin has pointed to her leadership of the Alaska National Guard and her Army son's imminent service in Iraq as evidence of expertise.

The campaign has little room for error. A new CBS News poll found that 66% of registered voters were undecided about Palin. And although enthusiastic support from the GOP base is important, strategists know that McCain cannot win without appealing to moderate voters as well -- a bloc that the campaign had hoped Palin's middle-class roots would help win over.

"She remains very popular in the convention hall," said Murphy, "but it's the rest of the country that matters."

Palin could face questions in on other facets of her past, such as her 1990s membership in the Alaskan Independence Party, a group that has pushed for more than 30 years to give Alaskans a vote on whether to secede from the union.

Another potentially troublesome story line is Palin's past support for federally funded projects that she now claims to have opposed -- a key piece of her reformist image to which McCain was most attracted.

As mayor of Wasilla, Palin made regular trips to Washington seeking federal aid. The city received $26.9 million in earmarks during her tenure from fiscal year 2000 to 2003, according to the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks pork barrel spending.

As The Times reported Monday, Palin has requested 31 earmarks in next year's federal budget worth about $197 million. On Friday, she portrayed herself as a champion of curbing the "abuses" of earmark spending.

For McCain, the Friday surprise of introducing Palin resulted in a weekend of buzz and anticipation. But if additional surprises surface about Palin, McCain could face stark choices.

Might he be forced to anger conservatives by dumping Palin? Could he risk an admission of poor judgment, tainting what he has long claimed as a key strength?

And if a new stumbling block could have been discovered by a more careful search, critics will no doubt question a well-known trait of McCain's: that he sometimes makes decisions on emotion instead of careful deliberation.

"John McCain is decisive and listens mainly to John McCain," said David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union.

"That is either comforting or discomforting, depending on whether you're trying to get him to do what you want."




By Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2008

ST. PAUL - Senator John McCain accepted the Republican presidential nomination Thursday with a pledge to move the nation beyond "partisan rancor" and narrow self-interest in a speech in which he markedly toned down the blistering attacks on Senator Barack Obama that had filled the first nights of his convention.

Standing in the center of an arena here, surrounded by thousands of Republican delegates, Mr. McCain firmly signaled that he intended to seize the mantle of change Mr. Obama claimed in his own unlikely bid for his party's nomination.

Mr. McCain suggested that his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate gave him the license to run as an outsider against Washington, even though he has served in Congress for more than 25 years.

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

With his speech, Mr. McCain laid out the broad outlines of his general election campaign. He sought to move from a convention marked by an intense effort to reassure the party base to an appeal to a broader general election audience that polling suggests has turned sharply on Republicans and President Bush. He invoked, in one of the most emotional moments of the night, his struggles as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Mr. McCain also returned to what has been his signature theme as a candidate, including in his unsuccessful 2000 campaign: that he is a politician prepared to defy his own party. He used the word "fight" 43 times in the course of the speech, as he sought to present himself as the insurgent he was known as before the primaries, when he veered to the right.

"Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight," he said at the end of his speech. "Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history."

Much of the address, though delivered at one of the most prominent moments of a presidential campaign, was little different from the stump speech he has been delivering across the country. And it was often offered in a monotone as he stood before a solid-color backdrop that flicked from green to blue. The reaction was far more subdued than it was the night before for his running mate, Ms. Palin. There were stretches in which he drew only a smattering of applause.

"I liked the conservative tone and that he talking about being prolife, self-sufficient - let's keep the money from countries that don't like us," said Peggy Lambert, a delegate from Maryville, Tenn.. "But man, Sarah Palin! John is gonna have trouble keeping up with her."

One of the livelier moments of the evening came when Mr. McCain was interrupted by several antiwar protestors who had infiltrated the hall. Their signs were quickly ripped from their hands, and they were carried out of the arena as the crowd shouted, "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"

Mr. McCain, who by now has become accustomed to these kinds of interruptions, responded with a smile. "Please don't be diverted by the ground noise and the static," Mr. McCain said, before adding "Americans want us to stop yelling at each other."

Mr. McCain faced the challenge on Thursday of pivoting from making an appeal to Republican base voters to reaching out to the larger general election audience watching him. Accordingly, there were relatively few mentions of divisive social issues as he returned to the way he has historically presented himself: as an iconoclast willing to challenge his own party. That image was shaken this year as he as appeared to adjust some positions in navigating the primaries.

"You know, I've been called a maverick, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum," he said. "Sometimes it's meant as a compliment and sometimes it's not. 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."

At a convention in which President Bush was barely mentioned, Mr. McCain paid only the most fleeting tribute to him, not even using his name. "I'm grateful to the president for leading us in those dark days following the worst attack on American soil in our history, and keeping us safe from another attack many thought was inevitable," he said at the opening of his speech.

Mr. McCain defined bipartisanship as not only working with the opposite party but being prepared to work against his own, even though he is aligned with Mr. Bush on two of the biggest issues facing the country: the Iraq war and the economy.

That pledge of political independence and bipartisanship could prove especially valuable at a time when Republican Party is so unpopular.

"I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party," he said. "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us."

But he also pledged to work across the aisle.

"The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn't a cause, it's a symptom," he said. "It's what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not you. 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."

That approach also permitted him to reprise what has been a central line of attack against Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, at a convention whose motto is "country first": that his opponent has put his political interests ahead of those of the country.

"I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again," Mr. McCain said. "I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not."

That was one of the few moments in which Mr. McCain directly engaged Mr. Obama. But every time he did - contrasting, say, the two men's records on trade or taxes - the crowd broke into loud applause, a clear signal of what they were looking for.

"I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need," he said. "My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God."

The McCain campaign not only tried to seize the "change" mantle from Mr. Obama but the "peace" one as well. Scores of signs saying "Peace" in capital letters were passed out among the delegates on the floor of the convention - despite the fact that Mr. Obama opposed the Iraq war from the start, while Mr. McCain was an early proponent of it.

Mr. McCain pointed to his support for increasing the number of troops in Iraq, which Mr. Obama opposed, as evidence of his judgment. "I fought for the right strategy and more troops in Iraq, when it wasn't a popular thing to do," he said. "And when the pundits said my campaign was finished, I said I'd rather lose an election than see my country lose a war.

The speech at times seemed low on energy, and the crowd responded less enthusiastically than it did the night before for Ms. Palin. But towards the end Mr. McCain recounted, in detail, his captivity in Vietnam, drawing repeated ovations.

"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said. "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. 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."

When it was over, he was greeted by his wife, Cindy, his running mate, Ms. Palin, and their families to the song "Raisin' McCain," by John Rich, a country star who is supporting him. Then the theme song of the film "Rudy" - which was the theme song of Rudolph W. Giuliani's presidential campaign - and the song "Barracuda," in what seemed to be a nod to Ms. Palin's nickname, "Sarah Barracuda."

Across the hall, delegates drew contrasts between the two speeches they heard to close out the convention.

"He doesn't have the sizzle that Sarah has," said Rick Lacey, 51, a delegate from Springfield, Ill. "That's probably why he picked her."

But David Kramer, a delegate from Omaha, said he was not bothered by that.

"Sarah really energized the crowd - energetic, emotional, and really uplifting," Mr. Kramer said. Her speech was more about the people in this room, the base. His speech was more serious - why is he fit to be commander in chief? What does he want to do for America. Sober stuff."

By Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper, The New York Times, September 4, 2008

The response to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in the convention hall was raucous and supportive -- and it was only slightly less enthusiastic in the living room of one undecided voter in the Midwest.

Linda Beebe, 59, a voter in Michigan, had been leaning toward Sen. Barack Obama before Palin's speech on Wednesday night. Before the Alaska governor had even finished speaking, though, Beebe had changed her mind.

"Could we drop off McCain and just have her?" Beebe said in a telephone interview. "She's talking about the things that concern myself and people I know. I know there's a big world out there, but if we're not healthy at home, how can we help outside home? She sounds pretty good."

Beebe said she did not like the negative attacks on Obama; she also said she did not particularly like McCain. "But I kind of like her," Beebe said. "She sounds like she wants to help Americans bring home the type of lifestyle we've had and help build up America."

But in the home of another independent voter, Laura Bates, 45, of Madison, Conn., the reaction was more muted. "She gives a good speech, and she's talking to the people in her audience -- but she seems antagonistic, and I'm not impressed," said Bates, who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primaries. "I'd say it's about 100 percent I'd vote for Obama at this point. She hasn't really said anything constructive . . . and she's been a little negative and smug."

Donna Lang, a food services employee in Massachusetts, said before Palin's speech that she would be supporting the Republican ticket -- and did not even need to watch the speech to know it.

After supporting Clinton in the primary, Lang said, she had been undecided until last week.

"Today I'm voting for McCain," Lang said. "I think it's a smart move for him to pick a woman, because all of us who have voted for Hillary Clinton have no one to vote for."

By Kyle Dropp and Anne E. Kornblut, The Washington Post, September 4, 2008

If the Republicans win the presidential election in November, it may well be said that they won it last night -- the night that John McCain's brilliantly screwy choice for a running mate changed from laughingstock to national star.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's acceptance speech wasn't brilliant rhetoric, and she's not entirely accomplished as a public speaker, but she put herself over with slick, self-assured skill. To those in the hall and probably to millions watching at home, she came across as genuine and down-to-earth, a self-described "hockey mom" whose confidence and bravado were not exactly ingratiating but were somehow persuasive.

She even told a pretty good joke, with a slight hint of self-mockery: "The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick."

"I think people will like her," said Chris Matthews on MSNBC, a fairly safe understatement. The crowd went wild for the speech, especially its nastier and more combative passages.

Palin is certainly no shy Little Miss Buttercup. In her more hostile moments, she went on the attack against Barack Obama, usually referred to as "our opponent," vice presidential nominee Joe Biden and all living Democrats with malicious zeal. Her use of sarcasm was, it must be admitted, crudely effective, as when she scoffed that "the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery," a mocking reference to the loftier oratory in which Obama specializes.

Commentators on more than one channel said the crowd in St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center wanted "red meat," and from last night's speakers, obviously including Palin, they got it -- blood red. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who preceded Palin, in fact delivered a boorish attack full of cheap shots. Seemingly, Giuliani is intent on systematically destroying, with each public appearance, the goodwill he had built up after Sept. 11, an event that of course he never fails to mention.

His habit of cackling with laughter at his own remarks, and pausing repeatedly to point to people in the crowd, helped keep his speech raggedy and disjointed; he gave the impression of a naughty boy gleefully sticking his fingers in Mom's cookie dough and congratulating himself for his deed.

It's unfortunate considering the strong showing of Palin that the Republicans have again decided to run against "the media" as well as against the Democrats, and to portray themselves as poor, abused victims of media aggression. Giuliani, who has made a second career of courting the press, referred sneeringly to "the left-wing media." Mike Huckabee spoke of "the elite media." And a poorly made film about Ronald Reagan, shown to the delegates on Tuesday night, included the outright lie that "the media hated" Reagan, when just the opposite is closer to the truth.

Reagan's time in the White House was a virtual love affair with the press, whom he charmed as infectiously as he charmed the whole country.

Jeffrey Toobin, one of the most valuable of CNN's army of guest commentators, said last night that he found it "ironic and rather unbecoming" that John McCain, who has enjoyed "adoring" treatment from the news media, should choose to be part of this kind of demagoguery.

McCain appeared onstage with Palin after she finished her speech and as the crowd's roars grew. There had been ugly moments, and Republicans seemed quicker to launch a chorus of "boos" than the Democrats were. But maybe the Democrats played it all too gently and nicey-nicey.

Palin gave the impression of an entire party rolling up its sleeves and digging in, never mind whether some of its arguments were illogical or shot full of holes, or even blatantly ridiculous, as when she portrayed the party as pro-environment and Giuliani earlier portrayed it as feminist-minded.

She proved herself in the great arena; that's what counts politically. Nobody could watch that speech and still consider her a joke, no matter how flimsy her credentials and qualifications may seem on paper. The joke, it seems, is on those who'd been laughing at her. Last night the laughing ended -- and the cheering began.

By Tom Shales, The Washington Post, September 4, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 3 -- Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running mate may be controversial, risky and untested on the national stage. But at the convention Wednesday night, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin proved to be an instant jolt of energy for a political party that has been worried and demoralized for much of 2008.

From the moment she was introduced Friday, Palin has been on the receiving end of an almost unprecedented barrage of criticism. On Wednesday night, she took the opportunity to answer back, and she put her critics -- Democrats, the media and the Washington political establishment -- on notice that she is ready for a fight.

Palin knew her targets and went after them one by one. It was an us-vs.-them attack, designed to attach Obama and the Democrats to the cultural elite and to tie herself and McCain to the values of the hardworking, God-fearing, patriotic middle of America. But while her speech seemed aimed at energizing the Republicans' conservative base, Palin also sought to introduce herself as a fellow reformer with a maverick's spirit to match the message that McCain hopes to send from here on Thursday night and through the rest of the general-election campaign.

There is consternation even within some parts of the GOP that McCain has recklessly risked the party's chances of holding the White House by making a visceral decision rather than a thoughtful one. Palin's foreign policy credentials will be a source of ongoing questions. And her rollout has been anything but smooth: Her announcement that her 17-year-old unwed daughter is pregnant caused a media frenzy, and her record as a reform-minded governor and mayor was challenged by evidence that she had actively sought earmarks in Washington.

But the more that has been thrown at Palin, the more the McCain team has seen opportunity to use her critics to turn her into a figure of sympathy. After several days on the defensive, they tried Wednesday to go on the offensive, with Palin's address the culminating event of the day.

With her speech, Palin clearly passed her first test in the national limelight. But in some ways, it may have been one of the easiest she will face in the 60 days until Election Day. Will a woman who inspired the faithful in the Xcel Energy Center wear as well with millions of undecided voters while enduring the daily buffeting of a campaign that can cause even the most experienced to stumble?

One Democrat watching the speech predicted that even Wednesday's performance may end up hurting her. He argued that the first impression she has made could be judged as too partisan, too harsh and too political.

But the reaction among Republicans after the speech was universally enthusiastic.

All day, as the delegates awaited her appearance, McCain's advisers were using the criticism heaped on her as a weapon, accusing the news media and others of trying to destroy Palin's candidacy before she was even formally nominated.

But it was left to Palin, who was known to few Americans outside her home state just a few days ago, to deliver the real message, and the three-minute ovation that greeted her demonstrated why she has been able to unite this convention behind the candidacy of a presidential nominee who has often been at odds with his own party.

Attacked as lacking the experience to serve as vice president, she ridiculed Democratic nominee Barack Obama, a onetime community organizer in Chicago, as even less experienced.

"Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my home town," she said. "And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Derided by her critics as someone who comes from a town of fewer than 10,000 people, she went after Obama for his famous "bitter" comment about small-town residents, made at a San Francisco fundraiser.

"In small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening," she said. "We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco."

Nor did she spare Obama's wife, Michelle. Invoking those same small-town roots, she said of her friends and neighbors and all those like them around the country: "They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America." That was a reference to Michelle Obama's comment earlier this year that, "for the first time" in her adult life, she was proud of her country.

Palin was equally tough in responding to her critics in the media and the political establishment who have greeted her selection with everything from skepticism to scorn to derision.

"I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion -- I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country."

Palin had plenty of help Wednesday. Three of McCain's rivals for the nomination -- former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee -- as well as Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle roused the convention audience with a series of attacks on Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.).

"Zero! Zero! Zero!" the crowd chanted at any reference to what the speakers said was the Democratic ticket's combined years of executive experience. "Sarah, Sarah," they cheered when Palin's name was mentioned.

And it was her night and her show. After the battering of the past few days, Palin and the Republicans reveled together in her arrival on the national stage. But tougher days lie ahead, and those tests will tell whether McCain was wise in his choice.

As one McCain loyalist put it shortly before Palin took the stage: "[He] had to reburnish the reform credentials, and she does it. Frankly, it's all or nothing. She'll either float the boat or sink it. It's classic McCain."

By Dan Balz, The Washington Post, September 4, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Sen. John McCain claimed the Republican party nomination he has sought for almost a decade by pledging to rise above Washington's acrimony as president and strike a new tone by reaching across partisan divides.

The pledge, in a speech delivered to the closing night of his party's national convention here, was designed to help him launch the fall campaign by reclaiming the image of an agent of change in a year when voters are clamoring for one -- and at a time when his image as a maverick has been questioned.

"The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn't a cause, it's a symptom," Sen. McCain. "It's what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not you."

It's a theme he has pressed for months on the campaign trial. Across the convention hall, the words "country first" were on display.

To some extent, the success that Sen. McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, has had in galvanizing the party's base here this week liberated Sen. McCain to reach beyond those voters to Democrats and independents in his own speech. Despite Sen. McCain's own calls for political peace, Gov. Palin and other speakers Wednesday night pressed a sustained attack against Democrats.

His bipartisan spirit extended to an early tribute to his foe this fall, Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama. "We'll go at it over the next two months," he said. "That's the nature of these contests, and there are big differences between us." But, he added, "you have my respect and admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us....I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Senator Obama and his supporters for their achievement."

And he stuck to his theme when his remarks were interrupted early on by two protesters. The crowd began shouting "USA! USA!" to silence the protesters. "Please don't be diverted by the ground noise and the static," he told the crowd, chuckling. "Americans want us to stop yelling at each other, OK?"

Delegates in the house seemed more subdued during most of his speech than they were a night earlier for Gov. Palin's address. But they came to life at the end, drowning out Sen. McCain as he urged them to "stand up, stand up, stand up and fight!" And perhaps thinking of his own election in this Democratic-leaning year, he said, "Nothing is inevitable here."

Substantively, Sen. McCain, whose strength as a candidate is his national-security experience and expertise, spoke bluntly and at length of the economic concerns of middle-income Americans -- directly taking on the theme Sen. Obama increasingly has made the centerpiece of his campaign. "These are tough times for many of you," he said, "You're worried about keeping your job or finding a new one, and are struggling to put food on the table and stay in your home."

Sen. McCain planned to leave St. Paul immediately after the speech with Gov. Palin for a campaign tour that starts in the battleground state of Wisconsin. He does so in better shape than beleaguered Republicans generally, but knowing that to win he has to reach beyond a shrunken Republican base to reach voters from both parties as well as independents. His goal now will be to woo important blocs of working-class males, suburban women, and independents in a handful of key states to win in November

In his overture to those voters, Sen. McCain openly criticized his own party's failings and its brushes with corruption. "You know, I've been called a maverick; someone who marches to the beat of his own drum," he said. "Sometimes it's meant as a compliment and sometimes it's not. What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party."

Ultimately, though, winning over swing voters in middle America, many Republican strategists believe, will require coming up with a sharper message to speak to middle-class economic anxieties. Sen. Obama is tailoring his campaign to bore in directly on those concerns, particularly with his proposal for a middle-class tax cut.

The McCain response is that, by keeping taxes low and improving the investment climate, he will foster an economy that creates and keeps middle-class jobs, while the Obama plan of raising taxes on upper-income Americans and businesses will be a recipe for job killing. "My tax cuts will create jobs," Sen. McCain said last night. "His tax increases will eliminate them."

And he pledged to embrace the new global economy and make it work for middle-income Americans: "My opponent promises to bring back old jobs by wishing away the global economy. We're going to help workers who've lost a job that won't come back, find a new one that won't go away."

In the process, he didn't offer any new policy initiatives, but ticked off a series he has offered to address economic worries: doubling the child tax exemption to $7,000 from $3,500; expanding community college training for workers who have been displaced; and an ambitious program to lower energy prices by drilling for more oil, building more nuclear power plants and developing clean-coal technologies.

But campaign aides acknowledge that they still have work to do in crafting a more effective message to the middle class on economics.

Another key step in winning Democratic and independent voters weary of bickering in Washington, Republican strategists believe, is restoring the image of John McCain as an independent-minded politician rather than conventional Republican. That was the image his speech sought to cast.

"Again and again, I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed," he said. "That's how I will govern as president. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again."

He tried also specifically to contrast his experience and his record of bipartisan deal making -- which sometimes has left him at odds with the party regulars gathered here -- with Barack Obama's track record. In claiming the Democratic nomination last week, Sen. Obama declared that he is best positioned to transcend Washington's entrenched divides.

"I have that record and the scars to prove it," Sen. McCain said of his ability to work across divides. "Sen. Obama does not."

Republicans have controlled the White House for eight years, and Congress for most of that, but Sen. McCain is casting himself as an agent of change, an indication of the power that word holds in 2008. "Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: change is coming," he said.

Sen. McCain's effort to enhance his brand as an unconventional politician benefited from his surprise vice-presidential pick a week ago. His speech was staged to further the concept; he planned to speak from a stage reconfigured with the podium placed at the end of a runway jutting out into the audience, so he could accept the nomination surrounded by delegates in a town-hall-style setting.

The speech was preceded by a biographical video of a man whose personal story has long propelled his career. He was held in a Vietnam prison camp for five and a half years, declining an opportunity for early release because others had been held longer.

"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said. "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. 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."

As he moves ahead now, Sen. McCain's best hope for victory is to try to recreate, as much as possible, the electoral map that brought President George W. Bush re-election four years ago. That will mean, above all, hanging onto the key states of Ohio and Florida, the two cornerstones of any Republican victory.

Yet even if he can, that might not be sufficient, Republican strategists agree. The prevailing winds strongly suggest that several 2004 Bush states -- Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia or Nevada, for example -- could go Democratic this time.

So the McCain campaign hopes to build a firewall by turning a big state or two that went to the Democrats in 2004. Michigan is the most intriguing possibility, along with Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

Sen. McCain leaves the convention having advanced his cause on one key front: Gov. Palin clearly has energized the party's core of social and cultural conservatives.

Whether the convention has made much difference beyond that depends on how the nation digests both Sen. McCain's own speech and the Palin pick more broadly.

The new campaign hope, of course, is that Gov. Palin has a blue-collar appeal that will help hold Ohio and pull victory closer in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. "Her speech last night was clearly well received here," former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said in St. Paul. "It was received well in many homes across the country. The issue is how many."

Initial readings suggested a huge audience was, in fact, watching Gov. Palin. More than 37 million viewers tuned in, just below the record of 38.4 million who heard Sen. Obama's acceptance speech last week.

Normally, though, a vice-presidential pick matters mostly in the margins, and Republicans acknowledge the road to victory is uphill.

Sen. McCain trails in most national polls, though by a modest margin. But underlying the short-term poll movements, there has been a longer-term drift of voters into the Democratic column. When a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked voters in August 2004 whether they considered themselves Democrat or Republican, they split evenly between the parties. Now, the Democrats have a nine-point edge on party identity.

That means Sen. McCain has to maximize the advantages he does enjoy with a few voting groups. The first is working-class white males, who have proven more resistant than other traditionally Democratic groups to the Obama appeal; in the latest Journal/NBC News poll, Sen. McCain wins by 58% to 30% among them.

The second target group is suburban women, who are more evenly divided between the two candidates. Among questions here: How many would have gone to Sen. Hillary Clinton had she been the Democratic nominee, and how many can be persuaded to cross over to the McCain-Palin ticket?

The third key group is senior citizens, who have emerged as Sen. McCain's answer to all those energized young voters going heavily for Sen. Obama.

The campaign set up the hall to make his address feel as little as possible like a standard acceptance speech and structure it in the town-hall format where he feels most comfortable. Sen. McCain's speechwriters, primarily longtime aide Mark Salter, who wrote the convention speech, often spun beautiful words that fall flat. Reading a speech has never been Sen. McCain's strong suit.

This summer the campaign almost completely did away with prepared speeches and surrounded Sen. McCain with voters. "This has been the hallmark of how he's campaigned in the past year and why he's succeeded," Mr. Salter added.

One Republican concern is that, in other ways, Sen. McCain has drifted away in recent months from the "maverick" reputation he long cultivated. On policy questions, where he once almost relished bucking his party, he has moved closer to the mainstream Republican view on a number of issues.

He embraced Bush tax cuts he once derided as tilted to the rich. He has decided the comprehensive immigration reform he fought for must wait until the U.S. has secured its borders.

Sen. McCain has also reversed a previous position to speak out for offshore oil drilling, citing high gasoline prices. He has made amends with religious-right leaders he once denounced as "agents of intolerance," saying he believes in reconciliation.

He has also taken steps to distance himself from the deeply unpopular President Bush. But Sen. McCain made a point of thanking him Thursday. "I'm grateful to the president of the United States for leading us in those dark days following the worst attack on American soil in our history, and keeping us safe from another attack many, many thought was inevitable."

Stylistically, Sen. McCain's become more disciplined and better at staying on-message. To prevent him from straying from the daily topic, the campaign no longer invites national reporters onto his bus for his vaunted "straight talk."

At convention's end, though, it appeared that the campaign was eager to replace his "straight talk" brand with a label as a fighter. He closed his remarks by bringing the crowd, which had been more quiet for much of the night than it was during his running mate's speech Thursday night, to its feet with this cry: "Fight with me. Fight with me. Fight for what's right for our country. "

By GERALD F. SEIB and LAURA MECKLER, September 5, 2008

By now nearly everyone in America knows that Sarah Palin described herself at the GOP convention Wednesday night as "just your average hockey mom." She isn't average anymore, though she can still throw a hip check. After a national political debut that ranks with Barack Obama's in 2004 and Ronald Reagan's in 1964, the Alaska Governor may be the future of the Republican Party.

With his nomination last night, John McCain is now the leader of the GOP. But win or lose in November, Senator McCain has elevated Mrs. Palin to new prominence and jumbled Republican categories in a healthy way. The reaction at St. Paul's Xcel Center - and the fascination around the country - shows how welcome this is.

For the past several years, the GOP has been caught in the malaise of what we have often called the Beltway status quo. As insurgents challenging Washington mores in the 1980s and 1990s, Republicans were the party of ideas and energy. But over time, as the Bush Presidency ran into trouble and the Tom DeLay Congress began to care most about its own re-election, the party lost its verve, even its raison d'etre.

On Wednesday, Governor Palin offered a new populist excitement, both as a messenger and in her message. By "messenger," we aren't merely referring to her gender, though that seems to be the preoccupation of the media. Her relative youth (44) and large family - complete with its many complications - were themselves a cultural statement. Though many in the media claim she was chosen because she appealed to the Christian right, Mrs. Palin never even raised the subject of abortion. She didn't have to, since her youngest son, the one with special needs, is proof enough of her pro-life conviction.

The same goes for her record of challenging the powers that be in Alaska. With so many Republicans tainted by corruption, GOP voters have been aching for someone willing to challenge that business as usual. By all accounts, Mrs. Palin has done so in Alaska, and is popular for it. In the coming weeks, we'll learn more about her Alaska record, and rightly so. Her governing record is fair - even essential - media game, in contrast to her daughter Bristol's pregnancy.

It's being said that in choosing Governor Palin, Mr. McCain was making a play for disaffected Hillary Clinton voters. Yet we heard just one line invoke women as a political issue, and then only in a positive sense: "This is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity." Our sense is that the Governor's real political potential lies in her appeal to Reagan Democrats and Truman Republicans, voters Mr. McCain will need in November.

Mrs. Palin was certainly helped this week by the media contempt for her selection. The condescension has been so thick that it offended not just Republicans in St. Paul but others who may have tuned in Wednesday to see if she was as unqualified as Sally Quinn and David Frum said she was. Mrs. Palin's refusal to be cowed is the kind of triumph over media disdain that most Americans relish.

No doubt the press corps - and Democrats - are anticipating that Mrs. Palin will be another Dan Quayle, who was a 41-year-old Senator when he was nominated for vice president in 1988. George H.W. Bush foresaw Senator Quayle as a similar reach across generations. But at the first sign of criticism, Mr. Bush's advisers gave Mr. Quayle a paint-by-numbers speech and all but stuffed him into a trunk for the duration of the campaign. His reputation never recovered.

The McCain camp wisely let Mrs. Palin play the role of a traditional Vice Presidential candidate in attacking the opposition, and doing so in her own voice. Her dissection of Mr. Obama's thin Presidential resume was as effective as anyone's, all the more so because she could compare her own executive experience to the 47-year-old Senator's.

We hope the campaign now resists any temptation to keep her under wraps. No doubt she will make mistakes on the stump, as everyone does, especially with an embarrassed press corps now looking for any what-is-the-capital-of-Laos-type mistake. But after this week, Mrs. Palin won't be easy to dismiss as too small for the job.

The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2008

ST PAUL, Minnesota (AFP) - Barack Obama has taken in a record 10 million dollars in campaign cash since Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin's scorching assault on the Democratic White House nominee.

"Palin's attacks have resulted in our campaign raising over 10 million dollars -- a one day record -- I hope she gives a speech every day," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

The Alaska governor has electrified the conservative Republican base vote since she was named to the ticket by White House nominee John McCain.

But the avalanche of cash into Obama's campaign suggests that her withering assaults may have also energized Democratic voters as well, raising doubts about her ability to bring crucial swing voters McCain's way.

Earlier Thursday, Palin sent out a fundraising email accusing Democrats of orchestrating attacks on her after a week which has seen fierce scrutiny of her past record and the revelation that her unwed teenage daughter is pregnant.

"Unfortunately, as you've seen this week, the Obama/Biden Democrats have been vicious in their attacks directed toward us," Palin wrote.

"The misinformation and flat-out lies must be corrected."

Democrats however challenged the Republicans to name an occasion when either the presidential nominee or his vice presidential pick Joseph Biden had ever attacked her family, after speaking out against such attacks.

"The only 'flat-out lie' is this ridiculous claim, and it proves that John McCain has wasted no time in teaching Sarah Palin the ways of the Washington he's inhabited for the last 26 years," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

"The continued dishonesty and divisiveness from John McCain's campaign has made a complete mockery of the reform and bipartisanship he'll boast about tonight," Burton said, ahead of the Republican nominee's primetime acceptance speech.

AFP, September 5, 2008

ST PAUL, Minnesota (AFP) - Democrat Hillary Clinton on Thursday rejected John McCain's Republican convention address, and gave her first damning judgement on his vice-presidential running mate Sarah Palin.

"To slightly amend my comments from Denver," the former first lady said in a statement as soon as the Republican nominee finished his speech.

"No way, No How, No McCain-Palin," Clinton said, reprising her top applause line from last week's Democratic convention.

Clinton said that only Barack Obama, who beat her in the bitter Democratic primary and his running mate Senator Joseph Biden, "offered the new ideas and positive change" that America needed.

"After listening to all of the speeches this week, I heard nothing that suggests the Republicans are ready to fix the economy for middle class families," Clinton said.

She also commented that McCain offered no plan for quality affordable health care for all Americans, to guarantee equal pay for equal work for women, or to "restore our nation's leadership in a complex world or tackle the myriad of challenges our country faces."

AFP, September 5, 2008

Barack Obama said the surge of American forces in Iraq has "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,'' though Iraqis still haven't done enough to take responsibility for their country.

"The surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,'' Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, said in a recorded interview broadcast tonight on Fox News's "The O'Reilly Factor'' program.

Obama has come under repeated criticism from Republican rival John McCain for opposing President George W. Bush's decision last year to send 20,000 extra combat troops to Iraq. While Obama said before that the additional forces have damped insurgent violence, his comments on the program were some of the strongest he's made on the issue.

The Illinois senator, who has promised to pull most U.S. combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months if he's elected president, repeated today his call for Iraqis to take more control of their own nation.

"Understand this, the argument was and continues to be when are we going to turn over responsibility to the Iraqis for their own country,'' Obama said during a campaign stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

McCain's Night

Obama's interview aired on the same night that Arizona Senator McCain gave his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

McCain, 72, has argued that the Iraqi government needed a substantial and sustained increase in troops to help establish its own security authority throughout the country.

"I fought for the right strategy and more troops in Iraq, when it wasn't a popular thing to do,'' McCain said tonight.

Obama, who has made his early opposition to the Iraq War a key part of his campaign, was among Democrats in Congress who spoke out against the troop increase and predicted it would fail to end the violence.

Anthony Cordesman, an analyst on Middle East security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, today challenged Obama's remarks that "nobody'' expected the surge to succeed so well.

"There was a very clear military plan that set clear goals,'' Cordesman said. Success wasn't "a certainty, but it also certainly wasn't by any stretch of the imagination something based on dreams and goals that nobody could have anticipated would succeed.''

Most Violent

Anbar province, once Iraq's most violent region, experienced on average two attacks a day in the four months ending May 31, according to the U.S. Defense Department's June 30 quarterly assessment of Iraq.

For the four-month period ending Nov. 10, 2006, before Bush ordered the troop surge, Anbar experienced an average of about 41 attacks a day, the highest in Iraq, according to the Pentagon.

Bush, in announcing the troop surge in January 2007, said the Iraqi government by November 2007 would take responsibility for all 18 provinces. On Sept. 1, Bush said Iraqi authorities had taken over security control in Anbar.

Obama today defended his opposition to the surge when pressed by O'Reilly to say he was "wrong.''

"There's an underlying problem with what we've done,'' Obama replied. "We have reduced the violence, but the Iraqis still haven't taken responsibility.''

Highest-Rated

Obama has appeared 10 times this year on the News Corp.- owned cable station's interview shows. Today marks Obama's first appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor,'' the highest-rated cable- news program.

The first-term senator was also asked about Iran, Pakistan and capturing Osama bin Laden.

Obama said he "absolutely'' believed the U.S. is in a war against terrorism and identified the enemies as al-Qaeda, the Taliban and "a whole host of networks that are bent on attacking America who have a distorted ideology.''

Iran also is a "major threat,'' he said, though warned against the danger of lumping different groups together as a common foe.

Obama said it would be "unacceptable'' for Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. "It would be game -changer,'' he said. "I would never take a military option off the table.''

Military Force

When pressed as to whether, if elected, he would prepare for possible use of military force against Iran, Obama, who has repeatedly called for greater diplomatic efforts with Iran, said it wouldn't be "appropriate'' for someone who might become president to start "tipping their hand in terms of what their plans might be with respect'' to the country.

Obama said he ratchet up pressure on Pakistan to take a more aggressive approach toward weeding out terrorists, including bin Laden.

Right now, Obama said, Pakistan is using U.S. military resources "with no strings attached.''

"They are preparing for war against India,'' he said.

Obama, 47, said the Bush administration "wasted'' $10 billion with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who was forced to resign last month after 17 months of political protests and violence. The U.S. failed to hold him "accountable for knocking out those safe havens'' for terrorists, Obama said.

Reaching an Audience

Obama's appearance on the O'Reilly show came as the presidential contender is wooing independents and Republicans. Fox is a good venue because many swing voters watch, and the network likely would have high viewership during the Republican convention, Obama adviser Robert Gibbs said.

"It makes sense to talk to all of your audience,'' Gibbs said. While some Democratic candidates criticized Fox's primary- campaign coverage, Gibbs said "we think we can get a fair shake.''

Fox News topped this week's ratings with its Republican convention coverage, beating Time Warner Inc.'s CNN and NBC Universal's MSNBC. About 9.2 million viewers tuned in to Fox last night to hear a speech from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The night marked Fox's highest-rated convention telecast ever in cable news and the third-biggest audience since Fox News began in 1996, according to the network.

The interview with Obama followed a meeting earlier this summer between Obama and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, who built Fox into a top-rated news channel in less than a decade, and Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News.

Obama, who resisted for almost a year O'Reilly's calls to appear on the program, expressed concern in the meeting about the coverage he was receiving on the channel, according to the Washington Post.

Ailes says he told Obama that Fox wasn't boycotting or retaliating against him, the newspaper said.

By Kim Chipman and Julianna Goldman, Bloomberg, September 4, 2008

John McCain's campaign expects to leave the Republican National Convention with $200 million in the bank and be able to match the Democrats' spending in the next two months, an aide said.

McCain will depart from the St. Paul, Minnesota, convention with $84.1 million in federal funds and the Republican National Committee will have about $125 million, the campaign aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Fundraisers are working to bring in another $80 million to $100 million over the next two months, the aide said.

With an increase in fundraising following McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, Republicans say they are no longer in danger of being swamped by Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign cash.

"The money game is essentially off the table now,'' said Eddie Mahe, a former deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Obama, 47, has raised more than $400 million for his presidential campaign. Since clinching the nomination in June, he has raised about $80 million a month for his campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

His fundraising goal, if met, may mean $100 million more to spend on the campaign than the Republicans.

Clinton Fundraisers

At the Democratic National Convention in Denver last month, Obama aides met with many of those who raised more than $200 million for New York Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and asked them to help.

"They went in and said, 'Look, we can't do this without you. We need you,''' said former Democratic National Committee National Chairman Steve Grossman, a former Clinton fundraiser who is now working for Obama.

Many of Obama's more than 2 million donors have given less than the maximum $2,300, and Obama's campaign sent e-mails appealing for more donations after Palin's convention speech Sept. 3.

"What you didn't hear from the Republicans at their convention is a single new idea about how to make the health- care system work, get our economy moving for the middle class, or improve education,'' Obama wrote. "Just attacks -- on me, and on you.''

The campaign reported taking in $10 million after Palin's speech, the most it ever raised in one day.

Palin Effect

"Sarah Palin's attacks have rallied our supporters in ways we never expected,'' Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said.

McCain fundraisers say Palin, who supports gun owners' rights and opposes abortion rights, has caused formerly recalcitrant Republicans to open their checkbooks.

"She's energized the base,'' said former New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who has raised at least $250,000 for McCain, 72. "Money will not be a problem.''

The day after her speech, Palin, 44, signed a fundraising e-mail.

"Your support is very important as we face the Obama Democrats and their vicious attacks,'' Palin wrote.

In the last two days, the Republican National Committee has taken in $17 million, a campaign aide said. McCain reported raising $10 million just after the Aug. 29 announcement of Palin as his vice-presidential choice; the campaign took in more than $47 million in August, its biggest fundraising month.

Obama has yet to disclose his August figures, due at the Federal Election Commission Sept. 20.

McCain can no longer take in private donations except to pay certain legal and accounting costs, so all the money raised goes to the national party and some state parties. In addition, McCain can turn over any leftover money in his primary account to the Republican National Committee.

"There will be more than enough funds to do everything that needs to be done,'' Mahe said. "They will not have to make a decision not to do something because of money.''

By Jonathan D. Salant, Bloomberg, September 5, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Shortly after a priest's opening prayer and a screening of a short film on John McCain's faith, Sen. Sam Brownback stepped to the microphone and didn't waste words.

"Just to get to the whole meat of the matter, the Catholic vote is a swing vote," the Kansas lawmaker and Catholic convert said at a Catholic reception during this week's Republican National Convention.

"It is a critical vote in swing states," he said. "It is a vote we can win - but only if we work to win it."

Catholics are shaping up to be the battleground religious vote of 2008. Recent polls show McCain and Democrat Barack Obama neck and neck among white Catholics - a better indicator of swing voters because Hispanic Catholics lean Democratic. With an estimated 47 million U.S. Catholic voters, the stakes are huge.

Obama and McCain want to energize Catholics who line up with them ideologically. But the real prize is the increasing number of Catholics who don't identify with either major party.

The largest bloc of Catholic voters - 41 percent - identify as independents, up 11 percentage points from 2004, according to February polling for Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

Neither presidential candidate lines up precisely with the breadth of Catholic teaching, but Catholic organizers for McCain and Obama are making the case that their man comes closest.

Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, co-chair of the National Catholics for McCain Committee, said in an interview that the McCain campaign is staging a "very aggressive" Catholic get-out-the-vote effort, dispatching surrogates to mobilize lay people at parishes and speak before anti-abortion groups and Catholic fraternal organizations.

In St. Paul, the independent Catholic Working Group, which works for Republican causes, invited Catholic McCain backers to three events: a Mass and reception at the Cathedral of St. Paul, a panel discussion on judicial philosophy and the forum at a hotel where Brownback and other Republican figures lauded McCain and lashed out at Obama.

One Catholic McCain supporter, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, spoke almost exclusively about abortion at various events this week, hammering home the claim that Obama would be "the abortion president."

Brownback highlighted McCain's stances against abortion rights and gay marriage. He lauded McCain running mate Sarah Palin, whose star turn this week has energized conservative Catholics and evangelicals alike.

But Brownback also challenged the notion that Democrats are more in line with Catholic social justice concerns, suggesting that McCain's opposition to torture and support of comprehensive immigration reform provide an opening.

"I am not conceding the social ground," said Brownback, a former presidential candidate. "We are a pro-life and whole-life party."

Getting out the Catholic vote was clearly on Brownback's mind.

"It is no gimme vote," he said. "This is one you've got to dig in and work on a parish-by-parish basis, get the list, identify people that'll get out and vote and then get them out to vote."

Brownback did not explain what he meant by "get the list." In 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign urged people to obtain church directories for voter mobilization, attracting criticism from some clergy.

Brian Hart, a Brownback spokesman, said the senator was "talking about identifying active parishioners who can both develop a list of other like-minded people in the parish as well as capitalize at the local level on the existing Catholics for McCain contact list."

A McCain campaign spokesman declined to say whether parish directories were in the campaign's plans.

Last week in Denver, the Obama campaign argued that his policies on the economy, environment and poverty fit the Catholic pursuit of the common good. They said his policies would reduce the number of abortions more than the Republicans would.

Obama's campaign has targeted Catholics likely to agree: young Catholics, social justice Catholics and women's religious communities. But it also has the endorsement of gOUGLAS kMIEC, a constitutional scholar and former Reagan administration official who just published a pro-Obama book called "Can a Catholic Support Him?"

One unknown in the race: the voice of U.S. Catholic bishops. Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput has said Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, a Catholic supporter of abortion rights, should refrain from receiving Communion.

And several U.S. bishops have rebuked Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for misstating Catholic teaching on when life begins.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Jim Nicholson, appearing at the same forum as Brownback this week, said more bishops need to speak out about core Catholic issues.

"And we need to help them," Nicholson said. "We need to give them cover, give them solidarity, because it can get very lonely for them."

But it's still rare for bishops to directly criticize politicians. Instead, Catholic dioceses nationwide have begun to distribute "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," an issue-based road map for Catholic voters.

By ERIC GORSKI, Associated Press, September 5, 2008

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Barack Obama's campaign plans to employ high-profile female supporters in an effort to blunt GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's potential to persuade women to vote Republican.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius all were scheduled to campaign for Obama in the coming weeks. Republicans say they hope Palin, who made her national debut with a feisty speech on Wednesday, could put some female voters in play.

"We respect her. She's a skilled politician, as she proved last night," Obama strategist David Axelrod told reporters aboard the campaign plane Thursday. "She's deft at going on the attack."

But it's not clear exactly how Obama and his running mate Joe Biden should respond. They keenly remember how women rallied around one-time Democratic front runner Clinton when they perceived she was a victim of sexism. They don't want to appear with a weak response, either, and certainly they also don't want to send independent women flocking to the GOP.

The solution, at least in the short term, will be have top-tier female supporters vouch for Obama to largely female audiences and keep the candidate himself away.

Sebelius started on Thursday, linking Palin to the unpopular President Bush.

"She mastered the words written by the Bush speechwriters and delivered them well. But what we didn't hear was what people talk to me about every day," Sebelius told reporters.

Clinton, a one-time presidential front runner, was set to arrive Monday in Florida. Obama aides had long planned to have Clinton as a surrogate even before Palin was named.

Clinton's camp says the message will be honed on her long-standing appeal to kitchen-table issues that helped her win 18 million votes, but not the nomination. There are no plans for Clinton to directly engage Palin, largely because the election is about the president, not vice president.

Obama's senior advisers say they cannot allow Palin to paint herself as the come-from-nowhere insurgent - a role that once belonged to Obama.

"For someone who makes the point that she's not from Washington, she looked very much like she'd fit in very well there when you see how she brings these attacks, they all felt very familiar to Americans who are used to this kind of thing from Washington," Axelrod said.

Obama himself dodged the question about how to treat Palin, only the second woman nominated as a major party's vice presidential pick and the GOP's first.

"I think she's got a compelling story, but I assume that she wants to be treated the same way that guys want to be treated, which means that their records are under scrutiny," Obama told reporters in York. "I've been through this for 19 months. She has been through it - what - four days so far?"

It was slightly more polite than Axelrod: "She tried to attack Senator Obama by saying he had no significant legislative achievements. Maybe that's what she was told."

The McCain campaign, keenly aware of the potential of their nontraditional pick, immediately used any criticism of Palin as a sign of sexism.

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press, September 5, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Not merely a Republican. Not merely a candidate. John McCain cast himself as a leader for all Americans, regardless of party or status.

After several days of Democratic bashing by his supporters, the Arizona senator struck a nonpartisan stance and promised that he wouldn't be bound by political party in the White House as he accepted the GOP presidential nomination Thursday before thousands of Republican loyalists.

"We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other," McCain told the Republican Convention, deriding "constant partisan rancor" that causes Washington gridlock. He rejected those in Washington who he said "work for themselves and not you."

McCain marched through a series of big issues - defense, taxes, education, energy independence among them - without offering many specifics. Instead, there were generic promises to "make it better," of "rewarding hard work," and the like.

He marked the pinnacle of his political life by delivering a speech in his preferred setting - surrounded by people. In this case, they were the GOP convention delegates who granted him the nomination that had eluded him in 2000.

"I don't work for a party," he declared. "I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you."

The GOP nominee was making an aggressive play for voters from across the political spectrum - Republicans, independents and Democrats. And even as he preached bipartisanship, McCain served up Republican dogma to the willing crowd, on abortion, taxes, national security, oil drilling.

His trick was to appeal to his conservative supporters without turning off independents.

On the convention's fourth and final night, McCain's campaign transformed the stage at the Xcel Energy Center to put him in a setting in which he typically performs best. He spoke from a podium at the end of a lighted catwalk extending into the crowd, hugged by the battleground delegations of Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and Minnesota. Behind him, a hulking video screen displayed a breeze-blown flag.

Even so, speechmaking has never been McCain's strong point, and his delivery Thursday clearly paled next to that of his running mate or his Democratic rivals. Pausing after each idea, McCain's delivery seemed better suited to a speech in the Senate. Barack Obama, his running mate, Joe Biden and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin had been riveting; McCain was more laundry list.

The delegates didn't seem to mind if their nominee lacked Obama's rhetorical polish.

"This guy has more experience in his little pinkie from speaking in the Senate than Obama will ever have," said Colorado delegate Gabriel Schwartz. "It was a much better speech for what it said and the way he delivered it honestly than some smooth speech from someone who can't deliver."

Seeking to give voters wary of Obama an acceptable alternative, McCain praised his Democratic rival and said that Obama's supporters had his respect and admiration.

"But let there be no doubt, my friends, we're going to win this election," McCain said, "and after we've won, we're going to reach out our hand to any willing patriot, make this government start working for you again, and get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace."

In an arena plastered with his "Country First" slogan, McCain told the GOP's most faithful supporters that he's repeatedly worked with members of both parties to fix the country's ills.

"That's how I will govern as president," he said. "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."

It was a rare mention of his rival; McCain used Obama's name only six times. And, he mentioned the words Republicans and Democrats mainly in tandem, urging the two sides to work together and trying to show how he was unafraid to take on both parties to force change.

McCain ended his 50-minute speech with a call to arms: He exhorted, "Fight with me. Fight with me," as the crowd's roar of approval drowned out his voice. With music blaring and balloons cascading, McCain stopped to savor the moment, then stepped down from the podium and was swallowed up among the cheering delegates.

For all his talk of reaching across the aisle, McCain got in his jabs at Obama. After all, there are only two months until Election Day. He said Obama would raise taxes, close markets, increase government spending, eliminate jobs. He criticized Obama on energy, health care, and education policies.

The audience was clearly hungry for it: They booed Obama after every criticism, though there were relatively few.

McCain mostly refrained from the brass-knuckled rhetoric that marked Obama's speech exactly one week earlier.

Perhaps the Republican's sharpest hit came without even a mention of his Democratic rival.

"I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need," McCain mocked. "My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God."

McCain has cast Obama as a presumptuous candidate, and his campaign has likened the Democrat to a would-be messiah.

The Arizona senator also issued a warning "to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming." That, too, was an indirect Obama reference. McCain has suggested his Democratic rival puts personal ambition above the country.

In his comments, McCain left it to his audience to connect the dots.

Certainly, McCain's speech wasn't as sharp as Palin's address to the delegates the night before - or a host of other speakers who came before him. Their speeches were filled with biting attacks on Obama and his Democrats.

McCain, however, can't risk turning off undecided swing voters, many of whom recoil at negative campaigning.

"Americans want us to stop yelling at each other," he added, trying to use the disruption to his advantage.

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press, September 5, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - John McCain preached bipartisanship and unity from a stage retooled to carry him out to the Republican faithful. He didn't have to be biting: On the previous night, his attack dogs had paved the way.

For every McCain call for consensus Thursday night, there had been a missile aimed at Barack Obama on Wednesday night. For every call to fight as Americans for America, there had been a party comrade calling on the faithful to fight as Republicans for conservatism. For every insistence that he was not working for any one party, McCain's allies had already done his dirty work.

This conflict between smiles and swordsmanship undercuts his campfire-song message of a unified nation working together for change.

"Let's use the best ideas from both sides," the newly minted GOP nominee said.

"We're all God's children and we're all Americans," he said.

"I fight for Americans," he said. "I fight for you."

That was his night. More indirectly, though, Wednesday was too. On that night, reading from the McCain campaign script, convention speakers saved the candidate the political indignity of attacking Obama; they did so themselves with no fear of driving up their negative ratings or turning off independent voters. After all, they weren't running for president.

Rudy Giuliani: "He's the least experienced candidate for president of the United States in at least the last 100 years."

Mike Huckabee: "Maybe the most dangerous threat of an Obama presidency is that he would continue to give madmen the benefit of the doubt."

Running mate Sarah Palin: "We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco."

Her point about straight talk is a familiar one. In fact, McCain has spent nearly a decade building the notion into a political brand; he calls his campaign bus the "Straight Talk Express."

The McCain who delighted Republicans on Thursday didn't have to try too hard. He has always had a compelling personal story, and he used it at every turn. When he did drift into the reformist rhetoric that earned him the label of maverick - which he embraced during the speech - he had the luxury of being able to pull punches that his friends had already thrown.

"I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed." McCain said. "I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not."

That was as direct as McCain got, at least when it came to Obama. His own party wasn't as lucky. In language that was careful but obvious, McCain took a healthy step away from President Bush and GOP members of Congress.

"I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party," he said. "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us."

Obama, the 2008 campaign's original candidate of change, chose a more direct approach last week in Denver. Rather than rely on his party colleagues to tote the negative party line, Obama owned his disapproval and mentioned both McCain and Bush by name. Some people would call that aggressive, even negative politics, while others would call it more honorable and direct.

"I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first," Obama said, rejecting the Republican notion that he put himself first.

The fierceness of McCain's surrogates allowed him to serve up red meat to his partisan convention crowd while keeping his hands unbloodied. The next night he stood before the country as a statesman-in-waiting, pledging to reach across the same partisan divide that his allies had widened.

And he was able to call himself a maverick, and define the term without a whiff of irony: "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."

But this week, John McCain didn't have to work for his party. This week, his party worked for him just fine.

By Ron Fournier, The Associated Press, September 5, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Invigorated by back-to-back political conventions, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama grappled for the mantle of change Friday as the fall race for the presidency took off in states teeming with the independent voters they needed to win.

Within hours of accepting the Republican nomination, McCain sent an e-mail appeal for donations arguing that he and running mate Sarah Palin stood for reform in Washington. He also denounced "Democratic operatives" whom he said "have stooped lower than anyone could have imagined."

The dig appeared to be a reference to Palin's announcement earlier this week that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter was five months' pregnant. Palin, Alaska's governor, said Internet rumors about her family had led her to reveal her daughter's pregnancy. Palin has stayed out of reach of reporters and was expected to begin campaigning on her own this weekend.

Strategists for the campaigns argued Friday that McCain and Obama would be engaged in debate over new directions for public policy.

"John McCain has a record of fighting to change," McCain strategist Steve Schmidt told "Today" on NBC. For Obama, he said, change is "a nice word, it's a campaign tactic ... it's nonsense."

Obama strategist David Axelrod countered that McCain was offering the policies of the Bush administration. "Last night Sen. McCain used the word 'change,' but the policies that he describes were very familiar," Axelrod said on "The Early Show" on CBS. "This isn't change, this is more of the same."

Buoyed by a unifying GOP convention and Palin's appeal to conservatives he had had trouble winning over, McCain vowed Thursday night to vanquish the "constant partisan rancor" he said was plaguing the nation.

"I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again," he said.

McCain and Palin left Minnesota immediately after his speech, bound for Democratic-tilting Wisconsin. Obama planned campaign and fundraising events in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

In a convention speech lasting nearly an hour, McCain promised before a nationwide television audience to govern as a political maverick with a bipartisan bent. And he reminded voters of the 5 1/2 years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison.

"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said. "I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's."

His speech capped the party convention, but Palin was arguably the star, electrifying Republicans Wednesday in a slashing speech against Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. She is the first female running mate in GOP history.

The 72-year-old McCain, campaigning to become the oldest first-term president in history, presented himself as a reformer willing to take on his fellow Republicans, including an unpopular President Bush. He chastised Republicans for falling prey to the temptations of power before voters deprived them of their majorities in the House and Senate two years ago.

"We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us," McCain said. "We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption."

McCain's speech was largely devoid of the partisan edge that characterized Palin's, which was aimed at solidifying conservative and evangelical voters behind the GOP ticket. Democrats countered that Palin was long on personal attacks and short on remedies for the nation's troubles.

Palin, 44, has been under a media microscope since McCain tapped her last week, but she seems to have energized Republicans heading into the fall campaign. Virtually unknown nationally a week ago, Palin has faced heavy scrutiny relating to her tenure as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska, and her 20 months as governor of the sparsely populated state.

McCain's aides have vociferously defended her readiness to become vice president.

"I'm very proud to have introduced our next vice president to the country," McCain said. "But I can't wait until I introduce her to Washington."

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press, September 5, 2008

ST. PAUL - Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska introduced herself to America before a roaring crowd at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night as "just your average hockey mom" who was as qualified as the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, to be president of the United States.

An hour later Senator John McCain, a scrappy, rebellious former prisoner of war in Vietnam whose campaign was resurrected from near-death a year ago, was nominated by the Republican Party to be the 44th president of the United States after asking the cheering delegates, "Do you think we made the right choice" in picking Ms. Palin as the vice-presidential nominee?

The roll-call vote made Mr. McCain, 72, the first Republican presidential candidate to share the ticket with a woman and only the second presidential candidate from a major party to do so, after Walter F. Mondale selected Geraldine A. Ferraro as his running mate for the Democratic ticket in 1984.

But the nomination was a sideshow to the evening's main event, the speech by the little-known Ms. Palin, who was seeking to wrest back the narrative of her life and redefine herself to the American public after a rocky start that has put Mr. McCain's closest aides on edge. Ms. Palin's appearance electrified a convention that has been consumed by questions of whether she was up to the job, as she launched slashing attacks on Mr. Obama's claims of experience.

"Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown," Ms. Palin told the delegates in a speech that sought to eviscerate Mr. Obama, as delegates waved signs that said "I love hockey moms." "And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

As the crowd cheered its approval, Ms. Palin went on: "I might add that in small towns we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening."

Ms. Palin was referring to Mr. Obama's experience as a community organizer in Chicago before he served in the Illinois legislature and was elected to the United States Senate in 2004 as well as comments he made at a fundraiser in California about bitter rural voters who "cling" to guns and religion.

The address by Ms. Palin, 44, who stunned the political world last week as Mr. McCain's pick for a running mate, took place before a convention transformed from an orderly coronation into a messy, days-long drama since the McCain campaign’s disclosure on Monday that Ms. Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant. Since then there have been a host of other distractions, including Hurricane Gustav, questions about how thoroughly Mr. McCain vetted what people close to his campaign have called the last-minute pick of Ms. Palin, and charges from Mr. McCain's top aides that the news media has launched a sexist smear campaign against his running mate.

"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment," Ms. Palin said in her remarks, which took aim at the news media as the crowd began lustily booing the press. "And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion; I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country."

Ms. Palin spent the first part of her speech introducing her family one by one to the crowd, including her husband, Todd. "We met in high school, and two decades and five children later he's still my guy," Ms. Palin said.

Ms. Palin also displayed humor in one of her biggest lines of the night when she said that "the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull" was "lipstick."

Ms. Palin's speech was the big draw of a convention night notable for not a single mention from the stage of the unpopular president, George W. Bush, who addressed the delegates Tuesday via satellite from the White House after the hurricane forced him to cancel his appearance.

Ms. Palin's speech came after Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York launched a withering attack on Mr. Obama as part of a relentless assault by Republicans arguing that Ms. Palin, the former mayor of a town of less than 7,000 people who has been governor of Alaska for 20 months, had a more impressive resume than Mr. Obama.

"She already has more executive experience than the entire Democratic ticket," said Mr. Giuliani, one of three former rivals of Mr. McCain for the nomination, including former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who took on Mr. Obama in speeches Wednesday evening.

"Barack Obama has never led anything, nothing, nada," Mr. Giuliani said, then launched an attack on people who have questioned whether Ms. Palin will have enough energy to focus on the vice presidency as the mother of five. "How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be vice president," Mr. Giuliani said. "How dare they do that? When do they ever ask a man that question?"

The criticism of Mr. Obama reinforced new television commercials by the McCain campaign that similarly belittled the Democratic nominee's experience. The campaign and its surrogates also took on what they called biased and sexist coverage of Ms. Palin.

In her address, Ms. Palin criticized Mr. Obama on foreign policy and national security issues as she tried to display comfort on those areas. She also embraced one of Mr. McCain's favorite mantras this summer, "drill now," a call for more offshore oil exploration as a solution to record-high gasoline prices.

"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems, as if we all didn't know that already," Ms. Palin said. "But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines, build more nuclear plants, create jobs with clean coal and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative sources."

The speech was the first public emergence for Ms. Palin since arriving here Sunday, two days after Mr. McCain named her as his running mate. Ms. Palin has spent her time in a hotel suite with her husband, Todd, and their five children preparing for her speech and the questions on foreign policy, national security and family matters that she will face from the news media when the McCain campaign makes her available to reporters. Their son Track, 19, deploys overseas for the Army next month.

Democrats, who have held much of their fire this week as the Republican melodrama has played out in Minnesota, criticized the convention as failing so far to address the concerns of ordinary Americans.

"You did not hear a single word about the economy," Mr. Obama told an audience on in New Philadelphia, Ohio, before Ms. Palin's speech. "Not once did they mention the hardships that people are going through."

Mr. McCain landed in Minneapolis on Wednesday afternoon and was greeted on the tarmac by Ms. Palin, her family and his family in a striking multigenerational tableau, 16 strong, with the youngest member Trig Palin, Sarah Palin's 4-month-old, who has Down syndrome. Later, in Mr. McCain's appearance at the convention, he praised the Palins as "a beautiful family."

Delegates said they were enthralled by Ms. Palin. "I think she's great; she's giving it back to the Democrats for all the sorry things they've said about her and about America," said Anita Bargas, a delegate from Angleton, Tex. "She's a conservative, and she has a great sense of humor."

With Ms. Palin facing a torrent of inquiries from reporters, Mr. McCain joined other Republicans in assailing news outlets when he told ABC News in an interview on Wednesday that "Sarah Palin has 24,000 employees in the state government" and was "responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply." He added that he was entertained by the comparison of her experience to that of Mr. Obama and that "I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America."

By Elisabeth Bumiller and Michael Cooper, The New York Times, September 4, 2008

ST. PAUL - Gov. Sarah Palin could not have asked for a better setting for her solo debut on the national stage: an audience enthralled with her selection as Senator John McCain's running mate even before she walked on stage to a roar of approval, after three days in seclusion with some of the country's most skilled political counselors to write, hone and practice her speech.

She drew warm applause as she described her life in Alaska and introduced her family. She heard cheers as she promised an aggressive energy policy that included more drilling. And Ms. Palin ignited a loud round of approving boos as she denounced the news media and "Washington elite" that she suggested had ganged up against her since Mr. McCain announced Friday that she would be the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

But her speech at the Republican National Convention, if delivered with confidence and ecstatically embraced in the hall, may prove to have been the easy part.

From here, Ms. Palin moves into a national campaign where she will have to appeal to audiences that are not necessarily primed to adore her. She will have to navigate far less controlled campaign settings that will test not only her political skills but also her knowledge of foreign and domestic policy. And she must convince the country she is prepared to be vice president at a time when the definition of that job has been elevated to the status of governing partner - something voters might have been reminded of Wednesday by images of Vice President Dick Cheney embarking on a mission to war-torn Georgia.

"The people who are in the hall - they've already been sold, they are the choir," said John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri,. "Now the question for her and for McCain and for everybody who is inside the hall is how to clarify their message to the American people."

But what is that message? Her speech left no doubt that she would take on the traditional role of a ticket's No. 2, attacking the top of the other ticket, which she did repeatedly and with gusto.

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," Ms. Palin said, a slash of the sword at Senator Barack Obama's job as young man working on antipoverty programs in Chicago.

The remark capped three days in which Republicans have sought to say it is Mr. Obama, and not this first-term governor from a small-population state, who does not have the experience to be president.

The question is whether someone who is so little known and has what even Republicans describe as a scant resume has the authority to make those attacks credible - unlike, say, her counterpart on the Democratic side, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, a veteran of foreign and domestic policy who attacked Mr. McCain last week. It is also unclear if the sharp and often mocking tone of her attacks - combined with her general avoidance of such key issues as the economy - might turn off swing voters across the country.

"It's more difficult with someone of her background to go on the attack than it would be for Joe Biden," said Warren Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire. "Before she attacks someone, she has to get out there and define herself."

Clearly, her big task on Wednesday and in the days ahead was to drive home the image the McCain campaign has sought to attach to this unexpected pick: the corruption-fighting governor from outside Washington, a socially conservative mother of five who can easily connect with working-class Americans in a way that Mr. Obama has so far had trouble doing. She scorned the trappings of elitism - she talked about driving herself to work, and how she put the Alaska governor's plane up for sale on eBay - as she signaled that she would serve as Mr. McCain's ambassador to Americans who think the government has lost touch with their values and needs. She went as far to compare herself to a haberdasher from Missouri who became vice president and later president, Harry S. Truman.

The problem for Ms. Palin is that that story has been tripped up by disclosures about her professional and personal life, enough so that at least until Wednesday, she had become a bigger figure at this convention than Mr. McCain.

In her speech, she tried to address that by belittling what she disparaged as the Washington elite and the news media - a sure-fire applause line at these kinds of events - and invoking her own experience as a reformer. Yet she made no effort to say what she might do as a vice president, no small question when her lack of a national or international portfolio suggests she would not slide easily into the kind of full partner role enjoyed by Mr. Cheney and Al Gore.

"The Gore-Cheney series of vice presidencies have changed the nature of the job," said Gary Hart, a former Democratic senator from Colorado and a friend of Mr. McCain. "What McCain has done is to try to revert to the 19th-century model, early-20th-century model of vice president - the 'job isn't worth a warm pitcher of spit' model, which means you don't do anything."

"But we don't live in that kind of world anymore," Mr. Hart said. And, he said, that is a particularly relevant question given Mr. McCain's age - 72 - and health problems. "I'm sure John thinks he can live forever, or at least for eight years," Mr. Hart said.

In an interview a month ago on CNBC, Ms. Palin went so far as to disparage the job of vice president, saying, "What is it exactly that the V.P. does every day?"

The one role she is going to play - and one that Mr. Cheney played - is helping to motivate the right wing of her party. The uproarious applause that capped her speech left little doubt that she had already moved easily into the job - a big lift for Mr. McCain, who has always had difficulty persuading social conservatives to trust him.

The question for the governor of Alaska, as she heads out across the country on her first national campaign, is whether she can do for Mr. McCain in a general election what she did last night with this audiences of delegates at the Xcel Energy Center.

By Adam Nagourney, The New York Times, September 4, 2008

ST. PAUL - Senator John McCain's Republican primary campaign looked all but hopeless. He had risked the wrath of his party to push for an immigration overhaul and now, just months before the Iowa caucuses, his grand compromise was falling apart on the Senate floor as well.

"Lindsey, my boy, this may bring us down," Mr. McCain said, turning to his friend Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. "But wasn't it fun?"

By this spring, when Mr. McCain had astounded political handicappers by virtually locking up the nomination, the thrill of noble defeat had been replaced by an anxious discomfort about his own victory. "I refuse to believe that this is possible," he said, curling up his face during an interview on his campaign plane. "I tend to be fatalistic about these things."

As he accepts the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday night in St. Paul, John Sidney McCain III, of Arizona, stands at the pinnacle of a career defined by a singular ambivalence about his own ambition, and success. Time and again, he lunges for the prize, then lashes himself for letting his pursuit get the better of him - for doing favors for his patron Charles H. Keating Jr., for stooping to ugly attacks on George W. Bush during the 2000 primary, for outbursts of temper at lawmakers who get in his way.

It reflects what his brother, Joe McCain, calls a "public dialectic" between the senator's drive to succeed and his desire to serve a higher cause. For decades his outward display of that inner conflict has proved advantageous, helping advance his career by forging his image as the un-politician, the candidate with an almost reckless disregard for his own fortunes.

His critics assert that the McCain of 2008 is not the McCain of 2000, or even 2007. He has surrounded himself with former proteges of Karl Rove, whose tactics he once denounced, embraced positions he once repudiated and initiated a series of attacks on Senator Barack Obama's patriotism that some say resemble the rhetorical rough-housing he regretted eight years ago. "Bring Back the Real McCain!" the cover of The Economist magazine implored last week.

His loyalists, though, say such complaints hold Mr. McCain to the standard of a nostalgic mythology that grew up around his last campaign, overlooking the tough competitor that was there all along.

"He is same guy he has always been, wrestling with all the things he does trying to be the guy he believes he has to be," said Mark Salter, Mr. McCain's closest aide. "But we are not just going to say, 'O.K., we'll just lose - we will lose graciously - maybe everybody will remember him fondly.' "

It is his combination of lofty aspirations and hard jabs that has made him a political force.

"You can't be above it all and accomplish all that he has accomplished," said Bob Kerrey, a Democratic former Senate colleague of Mr. McCain and fellow Vietnam War veteran. "It's a little like saying that Muhammad Ali was above boxing while he was doing the rope-a-dope. It's a tactic. It's not devious or anything. It is what it is."

The Crowded Hour

Mr. McCain has always had contradictory impulses: he enjoys both boxing and bird watching, cites as favorite movies both "Viva Zapata!" and "A Fish Called Wanda," and quotes his idols Henry Kissinger and Henny Youngman.

He wins admirers by boasting of the unpopularity of his views - on campaign finance reform, on the Iraq war, on immigration. An avid gambler, he is drawn to big bets and long odds - whether picking 1-against-99 fights with his fellow senators over their official perquisites, or defying convention by picking as his running mate a little-known Alaskan with a reputation as an irritant-reformer. He is the most disruptive figure in the Republican Party, and, as of Thursday night, its standard-bearer.

Until recently, Mr. McCain was one of the few United States senators who drove himself around Washington - tailgating, dashboard-pounding and cellphone-taking. "My philosophy is just to go like hell," Mr. McCain once explained. "Full-bore."

He often invokes "the crowded hour," a term from his political hero, Theodore Roosevelt, referring to the assault on San Juan Hill. In the Roosevelt and McCain lexicon, the phrase equates to a moment of reckoning, when worthy men prove themselves.

Aboard his campaign plane in February, Mr. McCain caught his breath after the four months that transformed him from a principled loser to his party's contender for the highest office in the land. "This has been a very crowded hour for me," he said.

The Self Critic

Few politicians have apologized as profusely or as fortuitously as Mr. McCain. He may be the only candidate-author whose editor cut back on the self-criticism in the first draft of his campaign memoirs. "He was quite happy to lacerate himself," recalled the editor, Jonathan Karp.

Joe McCain attributes his brother's habit of public penitence to the example of their father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr. "He would whack us on the rear end with these leather slippers that he had," Joe McCain recalled. "Then he would come back out rubbing his hands together, and I could tell he felt so bad that I almost felt sorry for the guy."

Their father expected them to live up to a military code of honor and atone for any lapses, teaching them that it was the only way to retain the respect of those around them.

"I think one of John's deepest needs is to be believed and trusted," Joe McCain said. After submitting to a forced "confession" statement as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, John McCain has said, he found relief from his shame by provoking his guards to beat him.

John McCain's aspirations were always grand. As a boy, he dreamed of an admiralty like his father's. As the Navy's liaison to the Senate, he set his sights on becoming a member. In Vietnam he had mused aloud to cellmates about becoming president, and as soon as he won his first Senate race in 1986 he "felt an emotional need to envision some future goal," as he recalled in his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For."

But he exasperated himself with his own self-defeating behavior - letting his barfly antics as a young pilot undercut his credibility as a Navy officer, or later jeopardizing his friendship with his patrons, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, by leaving his first wife for a glamorous beer heiress 20 years younger, Cindy McCain. "He has always felt very guilty about it," his Navy colleague James McGovern recalled in an interview eight years ago. "I have never talked with him for more than 40 minutes when he didn't bring it up."

For most of his political career, Mr. McCain was a straight-ahead partisan. He voted along party lines, crushed his opponents by outspending them, and sought to run the Senate Republican Campaign Committee. His preferred public image - the straight-talking maverick - did not emerge until well after 1989, when he became one of five senators caught up in a scandal over meetings with savings and loan regulators on behalf of Mr. Keating, a wealthy donor. In a marathon news conference and nonstop media interviews, Mr. McCain became the foremost critic of his own poor judgment (any other accusations he called defamation).

"The national media was saying, 'John McCain is the only one who is talking about this, and sometimes it seems like he won't shut up,' " recalled Jay Smith, a political consultant who advised Mr. McCain at the time. As the senator kept talking, "the scandal seemed to improve markedly for him." Seeing that his openness was effective, Mr. McCain later wrote, he adopted it as a permanent "public relations strategy."

Repentance became a theme of his career. He wove his regret over decades of smoking Marlboros into his drive for a tobacco tax overhaul. Then he said he felt ashamed of his own party for neglecting children's health by blocking the bill. He even organized his best-selling 1999 memoir, "Faith of My Fathers," as a confession. Written with Mr. Salter, his longtime aide, as a springboard to the 2000 presidential race, it catalogs his decades of misbehavior leading to the realization in a Vietnamese prison of the deeper satisfaction of "a cause greater than myself." Soon he was turning the Keating episode into a similar parable of short-sighted self-interest.

In the 2000 Republican primary, Mr. McCain sometimes seemed to be battling his own impulses as much as he was his rival, Mr. Bush. He opened the year with a speech in New Hampshire denouncing contemporary politics as "little more than a spectacle of selfish ambition" and pledging to take the high ground. At the same event, however, his campaign passed out a news release falsely asserting that Mr. Bush's "political" tax plan would "put Social Security in danger." Mr. McCain was apologizing by the end of the day.

Operatives on both sides say Mr. McCain gave as well as he got for most of the race. "It was McCain on the stump fighting the 'Death Star,' " - his epithet for the Bush juggernaut, Mr. Salter recalled.

But when his opponents unleashed anonymous phone calls and fliers spreading rumors about his family before the South Carolina primary, Mr. McCain fired back with a commercial accusing Mr. Bush of lying like President Bill Clinton. Its tone backfired, hurting Mr. McCain more than his target. Advisers pushed for a better attack but acknowledged they could not win the state. Instead Mr. McCain insisted on publicly apologizing and pulling the commercials. "So we died on higher ground," said John Weaver, a former aide.

A few months later, Mr. McCain was back in the state apologizing for holding his tongue about his disdain for the Confederate flag to try to win the race.

"I will be criticized by all sides for my late act of contrition," Mr. McCain declared. "I accept it, all of it. I deserve it."

His loss in South Carolina made him a martyr: the politician too good for politics. "He came out of that primary the most popular politician in the country," Mr. Weaver recalled.

"Is he crazy like a fox?" Mr. Weaver added. "Listen, he is a very good intuitive politician, and he is a lot smarter politically than those of us around him or he wouldn't be where he is at."

Former opponents marvel at Mr. McCain's political alchemy. "He takes a past failing, hangs it around his neck, and wears it like a medal," said Kevin Madden, who worked for Mitt Romney in the primary.

The Candidate

There is a part of John McCain that revels in his failures. "Sitting around, feeling sorry for myself" after losing in 2000 was "wonderful" he sometimes says. "Delicious," he recalls, with sarcasm but also a certain relish.

His 2007 stint as the Republican front-runner did not go well. "I'm much better in this environment," he said in South Carolina after his campaign was nearly broke, he had spiraled in the polls and shed much of his staff.

And winning can be imprisoning, Mr. McCain has found. For much of the summer, he had seemed merely dutiful on the trail, going through the motions. His aides have since imposed a new discipline, shielding him from the news media, scripting a daily message and reining in his tendency to improvise.

"At heart, he's a maverick, and the maverick doesn't like the corral," said Mark McKinnon, a close aide to President Bush and Mr. McCain who is not involved in the campaign. "But the corral is where he is. And it's working."

Mr. McCain's advisers say he hoped to pick up his 2008 campaign where his 2000 race left off - bucking convention, running against politics. He started his run against the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama, with an apology. Standing on the balcony of the Memphis hotel where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, he told a mostly black crowd that he had made a mistake years ago in opposing a federal holiday for King.

He toured the heavily black areas of the South, an unlikely trip for a Republican running against an African-American. And for awhile, he skipped over the attack lines against Mr. Obama that advisers had inserted into his speeches. When Mr. Obama declined his invitation to a series of town-hall-style meetings, Mr. McCain went solo, drawing scant attention from the news media.

"None of it got through - nothing," Mr. Salter said of Mr. McCain's message.

By midsummer, Mr. McCain had put the campaign in the hands of Steve Schmidt, a former aide to President Bush (and a fan of Ultimate Fighting). The campaign began a barrage of advertisements that ridiculed Mr. Obama as a celebrity, accused him of indifference to wounded American soldiers, and asserted that he put politics ahead of victory in Iraq.

He stepped up his behind-the-scenes courtship of influential conservative leaders with whom he had clashed in the past. And he abandoned past calls for the party to moderate its opposition to abortion in order to let activists draft what many called the most conservative platform in the party’s history.

If Mr. McCain has any ambivalence about the conduct of his campaign, he no longer displays it in public. Friends say he wants to become president and is learning how to get there.

"John has always seen politics as an adventure," his friend Mr. Graham said. "I'm trying to get him to think of it as a business."

The choice of Sarah Palin exemplified both. Her resolute opposition to abortion fired up conservative activists to get out the vote for Mr. McCain's election. But Mr. McCain's advisers say he sees her the way he sees himself - as an upstart outsider who shook up her state's corrupt Republican establishment. "The 'old McCain' is still there - look at the Palin pick," Mr. Salter said.

The surprise was also a glimpse of how Mr. McCain might govern. Mr. McCain promises in every speech that as president he would put country first, but his notions of honor and disregard for his popularity can make him an unpredictable patriot. He is a conservative committed to limited government, except when he sees a greater cause like global warming, campaign corruption or children's health. He boasts that he stood by the Iraq war long after the public turned against it, but also says he would never risk American troops abroad without deep public support.

His associates say Mr. McCain has come to see the presidential race in starkly moral terms, convinced that Mr. Obama's election would weaken America at a decisive moment for the security of the world. But Mr. McCain is also the first to confess that not all his drives are so selfless.

"I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism," he wrote in 2002. "In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president." He added, "I had had the ambition for a long time."

By Mark Leibovich and David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, September 3, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Republicans have nominated Sen. John McCain for president, handing the senator the prize that eluded him eight years ago.

By a roll call vote Wednesday, the Arizona senator clinched his party's nod. The late-night vote was conducted after vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin addressed the Republican National Convention.

McCain is scheduled to accept the nomination in a speech Thursday night. He heads into a competitive fall campaign against Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

If elected, the 72-year-old McCain would be the oldest first-term president.

The Associated Press, September 4, 2008

Last night at the Republican National Convention was "John McCain biography night" as speaker after speaker extolled the virtues of their party's nominee. President George Bush praised Mr. McCain's courage and vision and his appreciation of the grave threats facing America in an age of terror; Fred Thompson, the former senator and presidential candidate, laid out the riveting story of Mr. McCain's personal courage, which has come to define the candidate's public image; and Senator Joseph Lieberman told delegates of Mr. McCain's bipartisan bona fides and his efforts to reach across the aisle and bring solutions to serious national challenges.

The end result was the offering to the American people of a positive image of Mr. McCain, depicting him as a man of action, reform, independence and, above all, iconoclastic positions. But two days into the Republican convention - and with public opinion polls showing Barack Obama enjoying a strong bounce from the Democratic National Convention - it's difficult to argue that this was the most crucial message for Republicans to put out on the first full night of their convention.

The speeches on Tuesday night demonstrated that Hurricane Gustav may have dealt a significant blow to Republican efforts to use their convention to present a strong campaign message for the fall election. The cancellation of Monday's schedule moved Republicans two steps back; on Tuesday they only were able to take one step forward.

Two very significant elements were missing from the first night of the Republican convention: a coherent narrative that negatively defined Senator Barack Obama, and a clear sense of how the Republican Party will right the country's economic ship.

To the first point, the McCain campaign spent much of the summer presenting Mr. Obama as a fatuous, celebrity-like figure out of touch with ordinary Americans. In the short-term, Mr. McCain's tactics seemed to bear fruit as poll results before the Democratic convention showed a tightening of the presidential race. Yet Tuesday's speeches lacked a cohesive line of attack against Mr. Obama. Mr. Thompson labeled the Democratic nominee as "the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for president," who would raise taxes on middle class Americans; Mr. Lieberman harped on Mr. Obama's failure to reach across the aisle or show independence from Democratic orthodoxies.

While these attacks may have had resonance for some voters, they felt more like glancing blows, not full haymakers. With two days down in St. Paul, Republicans have failed so far to truly bloody Mr. Obama. That opportunity may soon be fleeting as it seems unlikely that the vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, or even Mr. McCain will focus the lion's share of their speeches on attacking their opponent. This is particularly important for Mr. McCain who has, to this point, failed to offer Americans an overly positive or affirmative vision for his candidacy - something he must do on Thursday.

It is the second point, however, that may be the greatest liability to come out of St Paul - the failure to offer Americans a sense of economic hope. Indeed, it was jarring at one point to hear Mr. Thompson say of Democrats, "Listening to them you'd think that we were in the middle of a great depression." With 80 percent of the country thinking American is on the wrong track - and the economy the number one issue - downplaying people's economic concerns seems like a dangerous political tactic.

Both Mr. Thompson and Mr. Lieberman presented Mr. McCain as the key to ending the partisanship and gridlock that currently defines Washington D.C. But this message seemed to be offering voters a solution to a problem that is not front and center in their minds. There is no doubt that voters are tired of the nasty, divisive partisanship of modern American politics; but that is hardly their key concern. "It's the economy, stupid" - and on this point all of Tuesday's speakers were lacking. If Republicans leave St. Paul having failed to give the American people a clear sense of how they will end the country's economic malaise it will be very difficult to judge this convention a success.

This is not to say last night wasn't an effective evening for Republicans. They were able to offer voters a stirring and glowing image of their party's standard-bearer. Mr. McCain's story of heroism in Vietnam is one that most Americans admire - and even in Denver, Democrats practically fell over themselves to acknowledge McCain's sacrifice. But with the growing backlash over the nomination of Ms. Sarah Palin, the largely positive response to the Democratic Convention in Denver and in particular Mr. Obama's acceptance speech and the overall structural advantages favoring Democrats this year, Republicans did not need a good night on Tuesday. They needed a great night. They needed to do more than positively portray John McCain for the electorate; they needed to reframe the presidential election so as to present Mr. Obama as a risky and inexperienced pick while offering an appealing economic message.

One of two is not bad; but with very little political room for error, that may not be enough this year.

By Michael A. Cohen, The New York Times, September 3, 2008

This surely wasn't how Sarah Palin intended to tell Americans that, if elected, she'd be not only the first woman to serve as vice president, but also the first grandmother. On Monday, though, Palin disclosed that her not-yet-wed, 17-year-old daughter is five months' pregnant. That word answered a tide of speculation on Internet blogs that a Palin daughter, and not Palin herself, had given birth to Trig, the family's Down-syndrome baby; Palin, you see, must have faked a pregnancy to protect the daughter's reputation.

But Palin's disclosure only prompted new waves of Web speculation: that the governor is a bad mother, that with two babies around she'd be too busy to serve as vice president, that she must have pressured her daughter not to simply have an abortion.

Whew. This rush to judge Sarah Palin - a woman whose name most Americans first heard only five days ago - is breathtaking. No, there has been nothing suspicious about either pregnancy in Palin's family. Time magazine's Nathan Thornburgh reported Monday that in their hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, her daughter's situation "was more or less an open secret. And everyone was saying the same thing: The governor's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, the father is her boyfriend, and it's really nobody's business beyond that."

Given the withering and deeply personal onslaught she's endured, Gov. Palin may feel like the loneliest woman in America.

She's not. Many families confront the difficult consequences of choices that young people make. Palin says her family will welcome and shelter her grandchild just as they've welcomed and sheltered Trig and her other kids. Judge me not by the situation I've been handed, she's essentially saying. If you must judge me, judge me by how I try to respond.

That's a message sure to resonate with parents and grandparents who have watched teens in their families make decisions that were irresponsible, or irreversible, or, in the most tragic cases, life-ending or otherwise irredeemable. As one Wasilla resident, a woman who has a son fighting in Iraq and another who survived a head-crushing workplace accident, told the reporter from Time, dealing with life's real dangers "makes you realize that a thing like a little teenage pregnancy isn't such a big deal. Bristol - and lots of other girls like her out there - are going to be just fine."

We'll see - which by one measure is unfortunate in its own right: Teenage parenthood is difficult enough in near-anonymity. Imagine how many people will be waiting to judge Bristol Palin, mother. Just as people now are judging Sarah Palin, mother.

Barack Obama is having none of that, threatening to fire any campaign staffer advancing the attacks on Palin's family. "People's families are off-limits," he said Monday. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This [situation] has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. . . . You know, my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn't be a topic of our politics."

But, of course, it is. The question is how the rest of us now deal with it: by dismissing Palin as damaged goods - or by giving her the opportunity to impress or disappoint us over the next two months. We can judge what she has or hasn't achieved: Her inexperience in foreign affairs, for example, rivals that of John Edwards, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney - three men Americans seriously considered as candidates not for the vice presidency, but the presidency itself.

And we can watch her cope with the same household vicissitudes many parents face.

Judging Sarah Palin will be America's parlor game from now until Nov. 4. She asked for scrutiny when she agreed to run alongside Republican John McCain. Bring it on. But the rest of us can temper our unfolding discoveries about this would-be vice president with what they tell us about her judgment and character. That's what matters:

We have seen Obama acknowledge his youthful use of illicit drugs. We have heard John McCain confess that his own immaturity destroyed his first marriage. We have watched Joe Biden's career suffer from disclosures of plagiarism in law school and in his 1987 campaign for the presidency.

Most Americans who've spent time assessing those personal difficulties have decided that none of these men's pasts disqualifies him to serve as president.

Sarah Palin's record as governor, and her prospective performance as vice president, are fair game. Her family's struggles are not. If there's a conclusion to be drawn, it's about those sometimes difficult consequences of decisions that young people make. If Gov. Palin helps the rest of us advance that lesson to the teenagers in our lives, she'll deserve our gratitude rather than our sneers.




Chicago Tribune, September 3, 2008

ST PAUL, Minnesota (AFP) - White House candidate John McCain will Thursday crown an unlikely political comeback when he formally accepts the Republican presidential nomination after a remarkable American journey.

The Arizona senator, 72, will take center stage on the final day of the Republican National Convention, a week after his rival Barack Obama took up the Democratic banner at a spectacular convention finale in Denver.

McCain will grab the spotlight a day after his vice presidential pick Sarah Palin emerged from a political maelstrom to capture the heart of fellow Republicans in an address that electrified the party faithful.

McCain's keynote speech will be a sweet moment for the former Vietnam war prisoner, after his campaign almost slumped into bankruptcy last year and lost a bitter 2000 presidential run to President George W. Bush.

The Republican Party convention, reverberating Wednesday with energy after Palin's prime time speech, formally nominated McCain as its candidate for the November 4 election after a fabled roll-call of the states.

Palin was given a standing ovation for a passionate, hard-nosed speech rocked the convention hall, and a beaming McCain bounded onto the stage to embrace his controversial running mate.

"Don't you think we made the right choice for the next vice president of the United States?" McCain asked, following days of political and personal revelations about Palin, the first-ever woman on a Republican ticket.

Palin's family joined her on stage, including pregnant 17-year-old daughter Bristol, boyfriend Levi Johnston and the Alaska governor's four-month-old Down syndrome son Trig.

Obama's campaign dismissed the convention as an exercise in mud-slinging without any program to fix the troubled US economy.

"We still haven't gotten a single idea during the entire Republican convention about the economy and how to lift a middle class so harmed by the Bush-McCain policies," spokesman David Plouffe said in an e-mail.

In a speech which mixed homespun small town values and searing political rhetoric, Palin, who will be formally anointed vice presidential nominee on Thursday, styled herself as a scourge of the Washington elite.

The Alaska governor lauded the character of McCain, and contrasted it to what she described as the "dramatic speeches before devoted followers" of Obama.

"For a season, a gifted speaker can inspire with his words, for a lifetime, John McCain has inspired with his deeds," said Palin.

The 44-year-old mother of five and staunch opponent of abortion also noted she had served as a smalltown mayor in her native Alaska, saying in another swipe at Obama that the job was like being a community organizer "except that you have actual responsibilities."

Obama started in politics as a community organizer in Chicago after law school.

"What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?" Palin asked in another mocking slight towards Obama.

"The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world."

The Obama campaign struck back in a strongly worded statement, saying that though Palin's speech was well delivered, it was the work of President "George Bush's speechwriter."

Spokesman Bill Burton said the speech "sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we've heard from George Bush for the last eight years."

"If Governor Palin and John McCain want to define change' as voting with George Bush ninety percent of the time, that's their choice, but we don't think the American people are ready to take a ten percent chance on change."

Since she was picked on Friday, Palin has disclosed that Bristol was pregnant, faced claims she abused her power as governor and mayor of a small town, and sought federal cash for programs opposed by McCain.

Palin painted herself as maverick in McCain's image, primed to go to Washington to launch a wave of reform.

"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment and I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

"But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion -- I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country."

Democrats have questioned whether Palin has enough experience to serve a "heartbeat" from the presidency, but she defended her credentials, saying she was steeped in executive leadership experience.

By Stephen Collinson, AFP, September 4, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Republican presidential nomination his at last, John McCain makes his case for the presidency to the GOP convention and the nation after his surprise choice for vice president, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, energized delegates with a rousing speech.

Searing, at times sarcastic, but always smiling, Palin used her speech Wednesday night to cast the White House as the logical place for a man of McCain's character. The 72-year-old began his national service as a 17-year-old Navy midshipman, before spending 5 1/2 years as a Vietnam prisoner of war and the past 26 years as a member of Congress.

"In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change." said Palin, toying with the central theme in Obama's campaign.

Palin's 19-year-old son, Track, ships out for Iraq next week with his Army unit. The governor was unflinching as she contrasted McCain's military record with a lack of armed service by Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

"There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you in places where winning means survival and defeat means death - and that man is John McCain," said Palin.

With his own acceptance speech Thursday night, McCain kicks off the general election and begins his final push to win a White House term that eluded the Arizona senator during a previous campaign in 2000.

"I think we've got to make the case that I'm ready, that I put my country first and it's time to put aside our partisan rancor and differences and work together for the country, and that I can create jobs and restore our economy and keep our country safe," McCain told ABC News in an interview Wednesday.

McCain secured his nomination early Thursday, Eastern time, following a state-by-state roll call vote by nearly 2,400 delegates gathered at the Xcel Energy Center on the banks of the Mississippi River.

Delegates witnessing Palin's political coming-out party had high hopes for her candidacy, especially after the 44-year-old faced the challenge of matching the star power of Obama. The 47-year-old Illinois senator accepted his nomination last week before a stadium crowd of 84,000 people in Denver.

"For too many times, we've brought knives to gun fights," said Chuck Gast, a delegate from Maryland.

When asked if Palin, a hunter, brought a gun to the fight, Gast said, "Yes, I think she brings a big gun - like a moose gun."

Alaska delegate Ralph Seekins, who knows Palin personally, said she relished her prime-time audience.

"She's an attractive lady and that's disarming to a lot of people," he said. "At the same time, she's a very capable lady. We respect her in Alaska and we think as the rest of the country and the rest of the world gets to know her, they'll be the same."

In a nod toward party unity, McCain also gave speaking roles to three of his former political rivals.

The highest honor was accorded former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who used a taunting, rollicking address to accuse Obama and the Democrats of not learning the lessons of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Giuliani said McCain "will keep us on offense against terrorism at home and abroad."

Alluding to last week's Democratic National Convention, he added: "Of great concern to me, during those same four days in Denver, they rarely mentioned the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They are in a state of denial about the biggest threat that faces this country. And if you deny it and you don't deal with it, you can't face it."

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said Obama "ducked and dodged" when asked recently about the threat of Islamic terrorism. "John McCain hit the nail on the head," said Romney. "Radical violent Islam is evil, and he will defeat it."

Meanwhile, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, known for his wit and humor on the trail, rebuffed those who questioned Palin's experience.

"I want to tell you folks something," said Huckabee. "She got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."




By GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press, September 4, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Sarah Palin delivered. An embattled vice presidential candidate, a novice on the national stage, the head of a family suffering its "ups and downs," the first-term Alaska governor rocked the GOP convention with a star-turning performance.

Wielding a stiletto and a smile, Palin belittled Democrat Barack Obama and praised her new boss, John McCain, jolting the crowd of GOP partisans.

"Don't you think we made the right choice for the next vice president of the United States!" McCain said, hinting the controversy surrounding his pick. "And what a beautiful family."

Indeed, the family was on display for the TV cameras - five children, including a 17-year-old unmarried daughter who is pregnant. Their mother lacked the soaring oratory skills of Obama - a man she attacked as a tax-raising, terrorist-coddling, self-indulgent liberal. But the former TV sportscaster spoke in calm, TV-friendly tones reminiscent of Ronald Reagan. Like the former GOP president, Palin warmed the crowd with quips and jokes.

"What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull," she said, pausing for a beat and a smirk. "Lipstick."

She left the crowd smiling.

"For too many times, we've brought knives to gun fights," said Chuck Gast, a delegate from Maryland,

When asked if Palin brought a gun to the fight, Gast said: "Yes, I think she brings a big gun, like a moose gun."

It was the crowning moment of a roller-coaster week in which the first woman ever on a Republican presidential ticket has faced questions about how closely the McCain campaign scrutinized her. She also has heard a wide range of inquiries about family issues, her policy positions and her record of public service.

"Our family," she said, "has the same ups and downs as any other."

One speech does not a campaign make. Kept at arm's length from the media in the days leading up to the address, Palin now heads out on the campaign trail, where events are less rehearsed, crowds less friendly and the environment less controlled. Even as she spoke, airplanes in Alaska were unloading reporters and political operatives sent to pore through her personal and public life.

A big test comes at the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate with her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden.

But tonight was hers.

Facing down her critics with smiling resolve, Palin took crowd-delighting swipes at Obama and what she called the Washington elite. "Here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country," she said.

A new celebrity herself, Palin cast Obama as a little more than a fancy speaker with a compelling biography.

"The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery.' This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer," Palin said, a clear reference to Obama's time as a community organizer in Chicago.

The Obama campaign had less than a warm greeting, saying Palin's speech was "written by George Bush's speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we've heard from George Bush for the last eight years." The speech was written by Matthew Scully, who met Palin for the first time last week.

Selected by McCain only last Friday, Palin addressed the convention amid questions about her qualifications and relative lack of experience.

The first-term governor had top billing at the convention on a night delegates also lined up for a noisy roll call of the states to deliver their presidential nomination to McCain.

Watching her speech were her husband Todd and their children, including daughter Bristol Palin, whom the Palins disclosed earlier in the week was five months pregnant. Bristol's 18-year-old boyfriend and apparent fiance, Levi Johnston, was seated with them.

McCain shook up the presidential race by picking Palin, a little-known governor less than two years in office. Since then, a bright spotlight has been trained on the life and record of the Republican governor who has bucked the state's political establishment.

Days after Palin made her debut on the national stage with McCain, the campaign announced her unmarried daughter's pregnancy. Other disclosures followed, including that a private attorney is authorized to spend $95,000 of state money to defend her against accusations of abuse of power and that Palin sought pork-barrel projects for her city and state, contrary to her reformist image.

"Our family has the same ups and downs as any other ... the same challenges and the same joys," she said.

Noting that the couple's oldest son, Track, 19, was shipping out to Iraq in eight days with the Army infantry, Palin praised McCain as "a true profile in courage, and people like that are hard to come by."

"He's a man who wore the uniform of this country for 22 years, and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who have now brought victory within sight. And as the mother of one of those troops, that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief," she said.

Largely unknown outside her home state, Palin told the convention: "I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better," she said, speaking of her home town of Wasilla, Alaska, with a population of about 6,500.

"When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too," she said.

Before becoming governor, Palin served as mayor of Wasilla, she recounted, adding: "And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Palin delivered her speech in a firm, cheerful voice. It was her first chance to introduce and define herself to the American public and, after it was done, her family joined her on stage. She cuddled her 4-month-old son, Trig, and waved at the adoring crowd like the beauty pageant contestant she once was.

By TOM RAUM and LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press, September 4, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Sarah Palin has done in five days what John McCain has never been able to do - fire up the Republican Party's conservative base.

The No. 2 on the GOP ticket clearly impressed the party faithful Wednesday as she smoothly moved from lavishing praise on McCain - "a true profile in courage" who has "determination, resolve, and sheer guts" - to throwing punches at Democratic rival Barack Obama.

"Victory in Iraq is finally in sight. He wants to forfeit," Palin said in her vice presidential acceptance speech. "Government is too big. He wants to grow it. Congress spends too much. He promises more. Taxes are too high. He wants to raise them."

Even as controversy swirled around the Alaska governor, there was little doubt that loyalists loved this mother of five, churchgoer, abortion opponent and moose hunter. They erupted at every mention of her name before she took the stage. And they gave her a thunderous welcome when she emerged.

The question now: Do they adore her enough to turn out in droves for McCain in the fall?

Obama had better hope not.

Palin's selection has "reinvigorated the whole Republican Party. People who were feeling down are excited again," said Eagle Forum head Phyllis Schlafly. "Hell, they're even getting enthusiastic about McCain."

The one-time scourge of the GOP who now is its new standard-bearer has never been a favorite of the party's right flank. He isn't publicly passionate about cultural issues the base holds dear, and distrust remains years after he called influential Christian conservative leaders "agents of intolerance."

Nonetheless, he tried to get the security, fiscal and social conservative bloc to support him during the Republican primary.

It didn't.

He won the nomination anyway, and hoped the right would eventually fall in line.

It still didn't.

The GOP's conservative core has been depressed with its nominee since he clinched the nomination in March. McCain has made slow progress drawing the base to his side and getting it ginned up for the fall.

Conversely, the liberal Democratic foundation long ago embraced Obama and is, as the Illinois senator says, "fired up, ready to go."

Then, McCain chose Palin.

Conservatives sounded like the world was right again.

"An outstanding choice," praised Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.

"Grand slam home run," gushed former presidential candidate Gary Bauer.

"Ecstatic," said Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention.

And, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch added, "I had tears in my eyes."

McCain insists he chose Palin because she was the best candidate - not because she was the best political option to appease conservatives.

"I can look the country in the eye and say this is a person who will bring change to Washington and start working for you and upon your side," he told ABC News.

Not everyone seems to buy that answer.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican, talked of the "pragmatism of politics" and said, "McCain felt that he had to solidify the base."

An AP-Ipsos poll from August showed McCain winning roughly the same percentage of Republicans as Obama would Democrats, but it also found McCain had the support of a smaller slice of conservatives than Obama had of liberals.

Both sides will be counting on their rank and file to turn out voters over the next two months.

In the days since McCain selected Palin, the media spotlight turned on the little-known governor's personal and professional life.

The world heard that her unwed teenage daughter is pregnant and that her husband once belonged to a fringe political group in which some members supported Alaska's secession from the United States.

Voters learned that a private attorney is authorized to spend $95,000 of state money to defend her against accusations of abuse of power and that she sought federal money for special pet projects for her city and state, in conflict with her reformer image.

Some Republicans questioned whether McCain had reviewed her background thoroughly enough. Many Democrats hammered McCain for having the gall to attack Obama on experience when he has chosen a running mate who hasn't been a governor for even two full years.

None of it seemed to matter to rock-solid conservatives.

They rushed to defend her and, in line with the McCain campaign's newfound strategy, attack the "liberal media." It's a surefire way to score points with the right - and talk radio hosts who speak to slews of conservatives.

Leading the charge, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson called Palin "a courageous, successful reformer who's not afraid to take on the establishment" and said her candidacy "has got the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic."

Added former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, "I'd like to thank the elite media for doing something that, quite frankly, I wasn't sure could be done, and that's unifying the Republican Party and all of America in support of Senator McCain and Governor Palin."

It's no wonder why the right is embracing her.

Palin is more conservative than McCain on a range of issues.

She favors oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; he does not. Palin has called for teaching creationism alongside evolution in Alaska's public schools; McCain says he believes in evolution when it comes to the origin of life.

She backs a complete ban on abortion except when a doctor determines that the mother's life is at stake; McCain would also support exceptions in cases of rape or incest. Palin has said she doesn't believe humans have caused global warming; McCain says they have contributed to it.

There's no doubt that those who have "generally been sitting on their hands for the last year and grousing about McCain," are "pumped about her," said Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback. "He may have pulled off the impossible by finding someone who fires up independents and Reagan Democrats while not turning off social conservatives."

By Liz Sidoti, The Associated Press, September 4, 2008

Leaders of the congressional Republican campaign against parochial pet projects in spending bills joined the party's aggressive campaign to promote the vice-presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin on Wednesday, labelling the Alaska governor a "reformed earmarker," who could be trusted to help trim wasteful spending from federal budgets.

"When it comes to earmarks, McCain-Palin is a reformer's dream and a pork-barreler's nightmare," Rep. Jeb Hansarling of Texas said at a hastily-arranged news conference.

"There's one person in this race who's actually vetoed earmarks, and her name is Gov. Sarah Palin," said Hensarling, who chairs the Republican Study Commission, a group of fiscally conservative House members.

As an Arizona senator for two decades, McCain has lambasted colleagues in both parties with equal fervor for their pursuit of line-items in appropriations bills that commit slivers of the federal budget to public works back home, some of them with little evident merit. As president, he has said, he would have no hesitation to veto spending bills with such earmarks. "John McCain was fighting wasteful government spending before fighting wasteful government spending was cool," said Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona.

The news conference was arranged to tamp down any worries in fiscally conservative circles about Palin, who's commitment to budget discipline has come under scrutiny in the week since she was tapped by McCain for the No. 2 spot on the ticket.

When her nomination was announced Aug. 29, Palin declared that she had "told Congress 'thanks, but no thanks' on that Bridge to Nowhere" -- a reference to the nearly $400 million appropriation for a bridge project to connect an island of 50 people to the mainland in Alaska, which became the focus of national ridicule and prompted a renewed congressional soul-searching about the propriety of earmarks. But, in fact, Palin supported the project as a candidate for governor and only turned against it after she took office, by which point it was no longer politically viable.

In addition, Palin sought millions of dollars worth of federal earmarks when she was mayor of Wasilla, and had that city of 7,000 hire a lobbyist to go after the federal funds, and as recently as this February requested almost $200 million worth of new funding for Alaska projects, according to The Washington Post.

Republican lawmakers asserted that Palin, like so many other Republicans in public office, had seen the flaws in the earmark process and come around to supporting a moratorium -- a policy change that several dubbed courageous.

"All of us here, I think, would consider ourselves recovering earmarkers," said Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the chief deputy GOP whip in the House.

The Republican lawmakers pointed out that the 2008 GOP platform, which delegates adopted Monday, called for "an immediate moratorium on the earmarking system" until the appropriations process could be reformed "through full transparency."

"In picking Gov. Palin, Sen. McCain has said he is going to take on the Washington establishment," said Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. "He is going to fight the status quo whether it be in the Republican Party or in the Democratic Party."

But Democrats slammed Palin as a slick politician and questioned McCain's judgement in picking someone who had so short a public resume.

"You can praise her as someone who played the inside Washington game well, but you cannot present her as someone who is a reformer on earmarks," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the chairman of the party's House campaign operation, who's in St. Paul this week to offer the party's spin on the convention. "The facts just tell a different story . . . What we're seeing here is the consequences of a rush to judgement and a rash decision by John McCain. I think it tells you an awful lot about the way he makes decisions on the fly."

By Kathleen Hunter, CQPolitics, September 3, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. - On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry.

On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.

We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?

Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.

It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn't be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols.

Sarah Palin hit the nail on the head Wednesday night (and several in the audience wish she had hit some reporters on the head instead) when she said: "I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone."

But where did we go wrong with Sarah Palin? Let me count the ways:

First, we should have stuck to the warm, human interest stuff like how she likes mooseburgers and hit an important free throw at her high school basketball tournament even though she had a stress fracture.

Second, we should have stuck to the press release stuff like how she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (after she supported it).

Third, we should never have strayed into the other stuff. Like when The Washington Post recently wrote: "Palin is under investigation by a bipartisan state legislative body. ... Palin had promised to cooperate with the legislative inquiry, but this week she hired a lawyer to fight to move the case to the jurisdiction of the state personnel board, which Palin appoints."

Why go there? What trees does that plant?

Fourth, we should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul.

Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a "cloud of rhetoric."

Fifth, we should stop reporting on the families of the candidates. Unless the candidates want us to.

Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq.

Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried.

Sarah Palin thinks that one is good for her campaign and one is not, and that the media should report only on what is good for her campaign. That is our job, and that is our duty. If that is not actually in the Constitution, it should be. (And someday may be.)

The official theme of the convention's third day was "prosperity," but the unofficial theme was "the media are really, really awful."

Even Mike Huckabee, who campaigned for president this year by saying "I am a conservative, but I am not mad at anybody," discovered Wednesday night that he is mad at somebody.

"I'd like to thank the elite media for doing something," Huckabee said, "that, quite frankly, I didn't think could be done: unify the Republican party and all of America in support of John McCain and Sarah Palin."

And could that be the real point of the attacks on the media? To unify the Republican Party?

No, that is simply the cynical, media view.

Though as Lily Tomlin says, "No matter how cynical I get, it's just never enough to keep up."

I couldn't resist that. For which I am sorry.

By Roger Simon, Politico, September 4, 2008

ST. PAUL - Moments after Senator John McCain announced his running mate - Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, an outspoken abortion opponent - his campaign sprang into action to fan flames of enthusiasm among his party's demoralized conservative supporters.

At a lunch Friday in Minneapolis, two of his top advisers - Charlie Black, a veteran political operative, and Dan Coats, a former senator from Indiana - were extolling Ms. Palin's virtues to about 150 influential evangelicals as evidence of Mr. McCain's ideological commitments.

That night, at a larger gathering of Christian conservatives, the campaign sent Frank Donatelli, vice chairman of the Republican National Committee, to reinforce the message: Mr. McCain would be a "pro-life" president, which could make a crucial difference with two Supreme Court justices close to retirement. (Mr. McCain has said that he would appoint conservative jurists and run a "pro-life" administration but that abortion would not be a "litmus test" for judicial nominees.)

The crowd erupted into a standing ovation before Mr. Donatelli started talking and another when he finished. Several participants described the meetings, both of which were associated with the Christian conservative Council for National Policy, on condition of anonymity because the group bars its members from public discussion of its activities.

The McCain campaign has spent months trying to shore up support among religious conservatives, who have long viewed him as a nemesis.

Mr. McCain has met with small groups of Christian conservatives in pivotal states like Michigan and Ohio - even persuading one Ohio advocate to send a mass e-mail message announcing his switch from "no way" to "I can't wait" to support Mr. McCain.

He used a recent appearance with the Rev. Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in California to embrace opposition to abortion more explicitly than President Bush ever did. Asked when a fetus gains human rights, Mr. McCain responded, "At the moment of conception."

And he has abandoned previous calls to moderate the Republican platform's support for a ban on abortion without exception. Instead, he allowed conservative organizers like Phyllis Schlafly to shape what many advocates say is the most conservative platform in the party's history. At Ms. Schlafly's behest, for example, the party approved an immigration plank calling for new laws to speed widespread deportations and other punitive measures at odds with Mr. McCain's stance on one of his signature issues.

To make up for a history of conflict with the Christian conservative wing of his party, Mr. McCain has in some ways gone further than Mr. Bush to reassure the right of his intentions, even at the risk of spooking more moderate voters.

"I am now more confident about a John McCain presidency than I am about a George Bush presidency," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "The campaign has courted conservatives aggressively, and it has turned around remarkably in just the last few weeks."

For skeptical Christian conservatives, Mr. Perkins said, the selection of Ms. Palin was evidence that when it came to the Supreme Court, Mr. McCain would deliver on the principles he laid out at Saddleback Church.

The mood of the party's conservative base may play a pivotal role for Mr. McCain in the fall election, in part because his campaign lags far behind his Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama, in assembling paid staff and building get-out-the-vote operations in swing states like Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Republican officials in those states say. To make up the difference, Mr. McCain is banking on his personal appeal, dusting off a four-year-old Republican Party operation built around Mr. Bush's very different candidacy and turning to conservative grass-roots groups.

Mr. McCain has been sparring with leaders of the Christian conservative movement since some attacked the 1989 nomination of his friend John G. Tower as defense secretary. Many objected that his campaign finance reforms would hurt their groups. And their opposition hardened when he campaigned in 2000 as the moderate alternative to Mr. Bush - including urging the party to soften its platform's total opposition to abortion.

His early efforts to woo Christian conservatives this year stumbled as well. When he addressed a gathering of the Council for National Policy in New Orleans this year, he made little impression, several participants said. Asked about his own faith, he appeared awkward, repeating stories he often tells about displays of faith he saw as a prisoner in Vietnam - stories, one person present noted, that involved only the beliefs of others.

Then, on June 2, the McCain campaign sent a pair of organizers to Ohio to meet with about 40 state-level Christian conservative leaders, hoping to enlist them in the kind of voter turnout efforts they had engaged in for Mr. Bush four years before. But the response was notably cool, several participants said.

Phil Burress, head of the Ohio group Citizens for Community Values and a driving force in church-based get-out-the-vote efforts four years ago, had already said publicly that he would do nothing to help the McCain campaign, and he made clear that he left the meeting unconvinced, people present said.

McCain aides took notice. Two weeks later, Mr. McCain sat down for an hour with six Christian conservative organizers in Ohio, including Mr. Burress, who grilled him on his views.

"For me this election is primarily about the next Supreme Court appointments," Mr. Burress later wrote in an e-mail message explaining that Mr. McCain had won him over. "John McCain, unlike most politicians, will not be bullied, threatened, paid off or pressured into changing his position."

Colin Hanna, a prominent conservative organizer in Pennsylvania and Ohio said, "The candidate and his brain trust have evidently concluded what we have always held as a given: that he cannot succeed without the enthusiastic support of the conservative base."

In July, when James C. Dobson, the influential founder of Focus on the Family, said on his radio broadcast that he, too, might drop his staunch opposition to a McCain presidency, campaign operatives quickly called to express their thanks and ask Dr. Dobson to meet alone with the candidate, a spokesman for Dr. Dobson said.

That conversation has not yet taken place, but on Friday, Dr. Dobson said the Palin selection had persuaded him to endorse Mr. McCain. Dr. Dobson said in a statement that the nomination "gives us confidence he will keep his pledges to voters regarding the kinds of justices he would nominate to the Supreme Court."

In Minneapolis, "it was as if the whole Republican convention had started drinking Red Bull," said Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, who added that when the McCain campaign had sought his input weeks before he had suggested picking Ms. Palin.

By David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, September 2, 2008

The culture wars are making a sudden and unexpected encore in American politics, turning more ferocious virtually by the hour as activists on both sides of the ideological divide react to the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket.

The campaign of Democrat Barack Obama put up an ad in at least seven key states Tuesday lambasting GOP nominee-to-be John McCain as an enemy of abortion rights.

At the Republican convention here, former Tenn. Sen. Fred Thompson took a shot at Obama's stand in favor of legal abortion.

Thompson made this case: "We need a president who doesn't think that the protection of the unborn or a newly born baby is above his pay grade."

That reference, perhaps obscure to most Americans, will be instantly recognizable to social conservatives. At the recent Saddleback Church presidential forum, Obama told pastor Rick Warren that the question of when life begins is "above my pay grade." And the phrase "newly born" refers to Obama's opposition - on technical grounds rather than the merits, he said - of a "Born Alive Act" while in the Illinois legislature.

The selection of Palin - a new heroine of social conservatives - has helped reignite not only abortion but also other flash-point issues in a way few of McCain's other vice presidential options would have done.

Conservatives see her as a kindred spirit who lives her anti-abortion words in the most profound way: by giving birth to a child she knew would be born with Down syndrome. Gun owners see her as authentically one of them: a hunter with a passion for the outdoors and gun freedom.

Social liberals agree - and are proving just as ready for combat on issues that many operatives and analysts believed would have less relevance in an Obama-McCain campaign. Both nominees have said they want to transcend the remorseless ideological and cultural conflicts which shaped so much of politics in both the Clinton and Bush presidencies.

"The choice of Palin is going to bring some of these issues, like abortion, same sex issues, the teaching of evolution in public schools, the whole role of what religion plays in public life, back to the campaign," said Rob Boston, a senior analyst for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "Culture war issues reflect a real divide that is evident in society today."

Until last week's Palin pick, many of these issues seemed to be receding. The National Review last year published an article titled "A Farewell to Culture Wars."

No official cease-fire had been called, of course. But McCain and Barack Obama were not inclined to make this campaign a big fight over family values issues - for different reasons.

McCain is a social conservative but clearly uncomfortable talking about his personal faith and personal issues, such as gay marriage. His comfort zone is talking about national security and the federal budget. Obama is a social liberal who has little interest in making this campaign about anything other than the economy, the war and the need to shake up Washington.

"Something happens in the political realm that tends to trigger the culture wars re-emergence. So it's always below the surface," said James Davidson Hunter, a University of Virginia sociologist who brought the term "culture war" into the political lexicon in the early nineties.

"McCain's choice of a social conservative and now the revelation that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant out of wedlock has triggered the issue back up to the surface," Hunter added.

Conservative evangelical Christians, the GOP's foot soldiers in these fights, are delighted by the emergence of a new leader who seems so genuinely in sync with them on abortion (opposes) creationism (believes it should be taught in public schools) and other topics.

"Palin signals that the McCain campaign figured out that reports of the death of the pro-life movement, and the influence of evangelical voters, is wildly exaggerated," conservative evangelical leader Richard Land said, who said he was "ecstatic" over the selection of Palin.

To be sure, cultural issues would be a factor in this election, even if McCain had sought to defuse them. Social issues dominate the 112 ballot propositions in 30 states in November, according to the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.

California, Arizona and Florida voters are considering constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Colorado, and likely Arizona and Nebraska, will have ballot measures to ban affirmative action. South Dakota and Colorado also have ballot initiatives that would effectively ban abortion.

But the surprise emergence of Palin on the national stage has given a human face on these debates and has guaranteed that they would dominate the conversation here at the Republican convention and in the news media.

"There hasn't been a lot of discussion of some of these, if you will, culture war issues like abortion and gay marriage and that has now come to the fore again," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.

Democrats, especially on blogs and in private conversations, have savaged Palin for the news that her 17-year-old, unwed daughter Bristol is pregnant and plans to marry the father. Liberal radio host Ed Schultz, who had already used the words "bimbo alert" to refer to Palin, suggested that she was a hypocrite for having a pregnant child while touting a social conservative platform.

But rather than drawing the ire of conservatives who disapprove of pre-marital sex, the news about Bristol Palin has buoyed many spirits, because she chose not to terminate the pregnancy and plans to marry the father.

"Why does the left think there is a pro-life movement? The pro-life movement is about helping women who get into trouble," said Gary Bauer, president of the social conservative group American Values.

"The whole discussion up until now has been about national security and the economy and now we see the culture wars back with her appointment," said Michael Cromartie, director of the evangelical studies program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. "It has re-emerged because of the circumstances of her fifth child and her daughter."

Republican strategists believe these wars are being fought on favorable terrain for McCain.

The annual Pew Religion and Public Life Survey recently reported that after voters gauged how liberal McCain and Obama were, "the average voter places themselves much closer to McCain than to Obama."

Forty-nine percent of Americans say their "moral values" are conservative, while only 20 percent say they are liberal. About half of voters, when asked to assess the moral values of the candidates, described Obama as liberal while nearly six in 10 said McCain was conservative.

Given the intensity of Palin support among conservatives, McCain may very well end up with greater flexibility than ever to make his own direct appeal to independent voters. Palin can keep social activists at ease - and excited - while McCain seeks to reclaim his maverick image with a more direct appeal to those Hillary Clinton supporters and undecided swing voters.

"In the last 72 hours, the focus [of social conservatives] has sharpened not only because of Palin's selection but the instinctive reaction of the left to her, that 'she is small town, what does she know; she's religious right, she's an extremist,' " said Bauer. "They are eliminating any chance they had to switch some of these" traditionally Republican states to the Democrats.




By Jim Vandehei and David Paul Kuhn, Politico, September 2, 2008

The risk John McCain took last Friday is comparable to the 72-year-old ex-fighter pilot knocking back two shots and flying his F-16 under the Golden Gate Bridge.

McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his co-pilot was the biggest gamble in presidential history. As of now, it is paying off, big-time.

The sensational selection in Dayton, Ohio, stepped all over the big story from Denver -- Barack Obama's powerful address to 85,000 cheering folks in Mile High Stadium, and 35 million nationally, a speech that vaulted him from a 2-point deficit early in the week to an 8-point margin. Barack had never before reached 49 percent against McCain.

As the Democrats were being rudely stepped on, however, Palin ignited an explosion of enthusiasm among conservatives, Evangelicals, traditional Catholics, gun owners and Right to Lifers not seen in decades.

By passing over his friends Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge, and picking Palin, McCain has given himself a fighting chance of winning the White House that, before Friday morning, seemed to be slipping away. Indeed, the bristling reaction on the left testifies to Democratic fears that the choice of Palin could indeed be a game-changer in 2008.

Liberals howl that Palin has no experience, no qualifications to be president of the United States. But the lady has more executive experience than McCain, Joe Biden and Obama put together.

None of them has ever started or run a business as Palin did. None of them has run a giant state like Alaska, which is larger than California and Texas put together. And though Alaska is not populous, Gov. Palin has as many constituents as Nancy Pelosi or Biden.

She has no foreign policy experience, we are told. And though Alaska's neighbors are Canada and Russia, the point is valid. But from the day she takes office, Palin will get daily briefings and sit on the National Security Council with the president and secretaries of state, treasury and defense.

She will be up to speed in her first year.

And her experience as governor of Alaska, dealing with the oil industry and pipeline agreements with Canada, certainly compares favorably with that of Barack Obama, a community organizer who dealt in the mommy issues of food stamps and rent subsidies.

Where Obama has poodled along with the Daley Machine, Palin routed the Republican establishment, challenging and ousting a sitting GOP governor before defeating a former Democratic governor to become the first female and youngest governor in state history.

For his boldness in choosing Palin, McCain deserves enormous credit. He has made an extraordinary gesture to conservatives and the party base, offering his old antagonists a partner's share in his presidency. And his decision is likely to be rewarded with a massive and enthusiastic turnout for the McCain-Palin ticket. Rarely has this writer encountered such an outburst of enthusiasm on the right.

In choosing Palin, McCain may also have changed the course of history as much as Ike did with his choice of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan did with his choice of George H.W. Bush. For should this ticket win, Palin will eclipse every other Republican as heir apparent to the presidency and will have her own power base among Lifers, Evangelicals, gun folks and conservatives -- wholly independent of President McCain.

A traditional conservative on social issues, Palin has become, overnight, the most priceless political asset the movement has. Look for the neocons to move with all deliberate speed to take her into their camp by pressing upon her advisers and staff, and steering her into the AEI-Weekly Standard-War Party orbit.

Indeed, if McCain defeats Barack, 2012 could see women on both national tickets, and given McCain's age and the possibility he intends to serve a single term, women at the top of both -- Sarah vs. Hillary.

The arrival of Palin on the national scene, with her youth, charisma and vitality, probably also portends a changing of the guard in Washington.

With Republicans having zero chance of capturing either House, and but a slim chance of avoiding losses in both, a Vice President Palin, with her reputation as a rebel and reformer, would surely inspire similar revolts in the Republican caucuses.

As Thomas Jefferson said, from time to time, a little rebellion in the political world is as necessary as storms in the physical.

The Palin nomination could backfire, but it is hard to see how. She has passed her first test, her introduction to the nation, with wit and grace. And the Obama-Biden ticket, having already alienated millions of women with the disrespecting of Hillary, is unlikely to start attacking another woman whose sole offense is that she had just been given the chance to break the glass ceiling at the national level.

Her nomination, which will bring the Republican right home, also frees up McCain to appeal to moderates and liberals, which has long been his stock in trade.

With his selection of Sarah Palin, John McCain has not only shaken up this election, he may have helped shape the future of the United States -- and much for the better.

By Patrick Buchanan, Creators Syndicate, September 03, 2008

The Republican presidential candidate is pulling bigger crowds and a gusher of cash to his campaign since his unexpected pick Friday of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

But questions about how rigorously John McCain vetted Palin and fresh scrutiny of the governor's record are fueling a larger debate about McCain's shoot-from-the-hip style and Palin's qualifications, in a crisis, to be president.

Can the first-term governor of a state with more caribou than people rescue the GOP in a tough election year?

Palin has the potential to shake up a race in which the field is tilted in the Democrats' favor by economic angst and a desire for change - or to be a disastrous distraction that makes McCain's course even steeper. The nine weeks from now until Election Day will determine whether she is "an enormous asset and a game-changer or she turns out to be a liability," says former House speaker Newt Gingrich.

"It's going to be a wild ride," he says.

For many Americans, Palin's speech tonight will be their first look at her. Written by former White House speechwriter Matt Scully, it will combine autobiography and policy.

"She's going to talk to the delegates about the future of this country, about how to reform broken institutions of government," says McCain strategist Steve Schmidt. "People will hear about her reform-and-change message" and about energy and its links to national security.

"She'll also communicate directly to the American people who she is," Schmidt says.

Her reception in the convention hall is sure to be positive, given the enthusiastic reaction she's received from delegates and other Republican activists so far. The McCain campaign raised $7 million on Friday, the day Palin made her debut as running mate - its largest daily haul of the campaign. In rallies since in Ohio and Pennsylvania, McCain and Palin drew larger and more enthusiastic crowds than McCain usually draws alone.

However, it's clear that the GOP has a long way to go in selling Palin as a candidate to everyone else.

At a discussion Sunday with undecided voters from Minnesota, hosted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, not one of the 25 participants thought Palin is currently qualified to be president. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday, 51% said they had never heard of her. Six of 10 said either she wasn't qualified to be president or they didn't know enough about her to have an opinion.

The first four days of her candidacy have brought a series of unwelcome disclosures, personal and political: Her unmarried teenaged daughter's pregnancy, a two-decade-old arrest of her husband on a drunken-driving charge and the hiring of an attorney to represent her in an investigation into the firing of Alaska's public safety commissioner. She has a reputation for attacking wasteful spending, but as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she retained a Washington lobbyist to seek $25 million in federal earmarks. She also initially supported $400 million in federal funding for Alaska's infamous "bridge to nowhere."

When he announced his pick, she and McCain cited her opposition to the bridge project as evidence of her credentials as a reformer.

McCain told reporters Tuesday as he toured a Philadelphia fire station that the vetting process had been "completely thorough."

Even so, some Republicans are nervous.

"I hope that there are no more surprises, that all the homework is done and that she is impressive," says David Frum, a former White House speechwriter for President Bush. "But the fear is, there's a lot of evidence that the homework was not done."

Reinforcing McCain's 'brand'

McCain is betting that Palin reinforces his "brand" as a reformer willing to take on established interests, including those in their own party.

Palin was the mayor of Wasilla (population 9,780 in 2007) when she came to statewide attention because of her whistle-blowing on ethics violations by Republican officials. In 2006, she beat Gov. Frank Murkowski in the Republican primary - "a giant-killer," Democratic pollster Celinda Lake recalls - then won the general election.

"People really thought she was a reformer and that was a big plus," says Lake, who was working against her election. "She is a very formidable campaigner, a very formidable debater, very appealing."

Palin, 44 and the mother of five, has energy, poise, a down-to-earth manner and a compelling personal story: from the PTA to the statehouse. She hunts, fishes and rides snowmobiles, pursuits Gingrich says should appeal to blue-collar workers in key states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Her opposition to abortion rights - and her decision to carry to term her now 4½-month-old son, Trig, who has Down syndrome - has reassured some evangelicals who have been wary of McCain.

"I have seen a complete turnaround of social conservatives toward the McCain campaign," says Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

The campaign also figures Palin's status as the second woman to be on a major party's national ticket could draw female voters, including some who backed Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I am delighted to see the historic nature of this," says Geraldine Ferraro, the former New York congresswoman who in 1984 was the first woman on a national ticket. "Barack Obama's candidacy is history. (Palin's) now is history. One of them is going to get to the door of the White House and pull down a sign that ... says, 'Whites only' or 'Men only.' "

But Ferraro doubts that will be enough to draw the votes of many women - including her own. "I'm a Democrat," she says. "I think women, like men, will vote for the top of the ticket."

In USA TODAY polls, McCain's standing among women didn't budge with the pick of Palin. He was backed by 42% of women in a poll taken before the convention, another on the day of her announcement and a third taken Saturday and Sunday.

Ferraro's example also underscores a potential downside of Palin's pick. At the 1984 Democratic convention, her nomination prompted an emotional celebration. Within weeks, she was enmeshed in a controversy over her husband's financial dealings that lasted through Election Day.

Palin has not been a familiar figure on the national stage - or even to McCain.

McCain met her for the first time in February at a National Governors Association meeting, where they chatted privately for perhaps 15 minutes. They met in person for a second time last week, when he invited her to his ranch in Sedona, Ariz. There, McCain offered her a spot on his ticket.

Just how deeply the campaign probed her background and finances isn't clear. The campaign dispatched staffers to Alaska this week, but spokesman Brian Rogers says they aren't investigating Palin. They are there "to coordinate and facilitate communications" with Palin's family and friends.

The scrutiny of a national campaign has sometimes been embarrassing, even disastrous.

For Dan Quayle, picked by the elder George Bush as his running mate in 1988, questions about his service in the National Guard and admission to law school created the impression Quayle was a political lightweight. In 1972, the revelation that Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton had undergone shock therapy forced him off the Democratic ticket. That didn't help the beleaguered nominee, George McGovern. He lost 49 states.

'He's catering, or he's folding'

Palin may do more for McCain's base than for the swing voters he needs to attract.

Teresa Ludwig, 56, a health and safety officer at the University of Minnesota, participated in the roundtable with undecided voters Sunday, sponsored by AARP. She voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. This year, she attended the state's Democratic caucuses for Clinton but was weighing a vote for McCain because of his maverick image and history of bipartisanship.

Now McCain's choice of Palin has made her lean toward the Democrats again.

"When he picked Palin, I was just, 'Oh, gee, I know who won on this one.' It was just placating to the religious-right base," Ludwig says. "He's catering, or he's folding." The opportunity to elect a woman doesn't sway this former Clinton supporter. "We can't be bought that easy," she says.

"If something does happen to McCain, and she ends up being president, we're in big trouble," says Wendy Brumm, 53, of Ham Lake, who works in an after-school program and joined the roundtable.

Still, Brumm admires Palin's opposition to abortion and finds her intriguing. "She's got potential," Brumm says. "I think she's got a lot of guts."

Palin's biggest test could come Oct. 2 in St. Louis, at the debate between the vice presidential candidates. That will be a prime opportunity to settle questions about her qualifications.

"It's like bringing somebody up from Triple A to the majors during the World Series," says David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union and a Palin supporter. "It's not the same game and nobody knows if they're going to be able to hit the pitches or not."

The McCain campaign's dominant argument against Obama has been that he's not ready to be president. Palin's short resume - she has been governor for less than 20 months - doesn't undercut that, McCain strategist Schmidt says.

"She is, by any objective measurement, more experienced and more accomplished than Sen. Obama," Schmidt says. "She's the governor of a state, she deals with multibillion-dollar budgets, she has a record of accomplishment."

McCain's wife, Cindy, has joined the defense. "Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. So it's not as if she doesn't understand what's at stake here," Cindy McCain said Sunday on ABC's This Week.

Obama's running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, is everything Palin is not. At 65, he is a six-term senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on a first-name basis with foreign leaders worldwide.

But Palin's candidacy and the vice presidential debate presents risks for Biden, too.

She is a matter-of-fact Alaskan; he is a Washington fixture with a reputation for verbosity. In referring to women, he has tended to mention style as well as substance. Last week, he introduced wife Jill as "drop-dead gorgeous" before he mentioned her doctorate in education. On Sunday, he described Palin to an Ohio crowd as "good looking."

In a debate, Biden's self-confidence could come across as condescending or even bullying.

That's a lesson then-congressman Rick Lazio learned when he debated Clinton during the 2000 New York Senate race. He crossed the stage to her lectern, waving a written pledge on campaign finance and urging her to sign it. Some female voters recoiled, and Lazio's poll standing slumped.

"There's no way she was intimidated, but that wasn't the point. I should have been smarter about how the audience was going to view that," Lazio says. "If I was Biden, I'd be thinking about that."

By Susan Page and Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY, September 2, 2008

In selecting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) as his running mate, John McCain violated the first, and perhaps only, rule of vice presidential selection - first do no harm.

Commentary aplenty has explored her qualifications for the job. Instead of retracing that well-trod ground, consider what the process reveals about John McCain himself.

With his first "presidential" decision, McCain has cast considerable, and mostly unflattering, light on his own character and thinking.

First and foremost, it underlines his rash and impetuous nature. Whatever her appeals, what kind of person offers the vice presidency to someone he met just once before? What kind of judgment does that reflect?

I have heard of love at first sight, of people who decide they will marry after one date, but proposals after the first date only happen in sappy movies. Even among groups practicing arranged marriage, two or more meetings between the prospective spouses are normal.

McCain's brand of rash decision-making may be charming when it comes to love and marriage, but can we afford to put the finger of such an impetuous man on the proverbial button? "Scary as hell."

Second, as faulty use of intelligence only recently plunged us into an unnecessary war, it is reasonable to ask how McCain gathers and sifts through such information. Reports suggest that his vetters did not bother to comb through Palin's local newspaper or interview key figures - a stunning intelligence failure.

Did McCain know that the Republican president of Alaska's state Senate, a woman who hails from Palin's hometown of 8,000, would rush to tell the press, "She's not prepared to be governor; how can she be prepared to be vice president or president?"

Did McCain's intelligence-gathering operation realize Palin was embroiled in a scandal, with a special prosecutor's report on her alleged abuse of power due just weeks, or perhaps days, before the November election?

Did McCain know she had campaigned for governor on a "Build the Bridge to Nowhere" platform before he touted her opposition to it as a prime reason for her selection?

Did McCain know that her state's largest paper would question the choice, exclaiming, "it's stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be a heartbeat away from the presidency"; or that the state's second-largest paper would conclude, "regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job"?

Did McCain fail to learn, or merely ignore the fact, that she not only sat in the pews for Pat Buchanan's hortatory speeches without denouncing him, but also proudly wore his button?

Third, the Palin selection clearly reveals McCain as a prisoner of the GOP's radical right.

Having reportedly settled on Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) as his unconventional running mate, McCain quickly reversed course under pressure from the denizens of the far right. Anyone who persists in seeing McCain as a moderate should be jolted to reality by the fact that he willingly ceded this decision to the extremists.

Finally, McCain's selection of Palin suggests that the non-political image he attempts to cultivate is merely a mirage masking the crassest kind of politician. As the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner put it, "McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation's."

Palin's own remarks in Dayton confirmed her understanding that she was on the ticket for a purely political purpose.

McCain made an impetuous decision in order to prove his fealty to the Republican right while demonstrating that he will do anything to get elected. Is that the kind of president the rest of us want?




By Mark Mellman, The Hill, September 2, 2008

SAN DIEGO -- Never mind the naysayers and inside-the-Beltway snobs who mock John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. This was a brilliant choice.

Sure, it's a risk. But as Palin's defenders point out, no less a risk than asking the country to take a chance at the top of the ticket on a first-term senator from Illinois who doesn't have much to show in legislative accomplishments or foreign policy expertise.

I've defended Barack Obama by urging that we think outside the box and ask whether the world with which McCain is so familiar hasn't changed over the last 40 years to the point where it's no longer familiar to the rest of us. Now it's fair to raise the same concern about the individual whom Palin will square off against, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, who entered the Senate when Palin was 8.

Still, not all is well in McCainland. The news that Palin's unmarried 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant has raised questions about whether this choice was properly vetted and whether the selection was made in haste. That should be investigated since it reflects on McCain's judgment.

But that has nothing to do with Sarah Palin. So let's stop piling on, especially since all too many pundits and politicos have little to offer but snarky criticisms. And let's give McCain credit for a daring choice that offers more to the Republican Party and the country than many realize at the moment.

This was McCain using his opponent's strength against him. Coming on the heels of a Democratic convention that was all about diversity, change and making history, it offered an alternative to Americans who are ready to shake up Washington but who don't think that Obama is the one to do the shaking. It also showed that neither party is wedded to the old and tired image of four white males vying to lead the country.

Besides, those who know Palin best -- her Alaska constituents -- tell reporters they like her, trust her and find her easy to relate to, which happen to be the same personal qualities that many Americans say they find lacking in the Democratic nominee. And anyone who thinks those qualities aren't important in a presidential candidate probably doesn't understand why Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush beat John Kerry in 2004.

Lastly, picking Palin gave the McCain campaign a much-needed infusion of excitement, and donors have responded by contributing more than $10 million since the selection was announced. In fact, the McCain campaign reported recently that it raised $47 million in August, the largest monthly fundraising total to date. For a campaign that was growing stale, this was welcome news indeed. No wonder McCain quipped to Fox News about Palin, "I wish I'd taken her a month ago."

But what really gave away that this was a good choice was the reaction from the Democrats and their pals in the media. When they weren't criticizing Palin, they were painting her as inexperienced. Needless to say, these are not folks who worry about the best interests of the Republican Party. It's fair to say that if McCain's VP choice had gone over well in these quarters, then it would have been time for the GOP to worry.

Perhaps liberals are afraid that a McCain-Palin ticket might be easy to underestimate but difficult to beat. It's likely Democrats would have preferred to run against a ticket that included a more predictable running mate such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or a pro-choice candidate who would have alienated the Republican base such as former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Or maybe the left is simply bothered by the fact that, with such a bold move, McCain seems to have cheated Barack Obama and Joe Biden out of a large post-convention bounce.

Republicans have lots of reasons to be enthused about this choice, and Democrats lots of reasons to resent it. But in the end, no matter how this election turns out, it's the country that stands to benefit the most from John McCain's historic decision to launch Sarah Palin onto the national stage.

By Ruben Navarrette, The Washington Post, September 03, 2008

ST. PAUL

For many years, reality was out of vogue with Republicans. They ignored the reality of Iraq and Katrina, of Pakistan and Osama bin Laden.

When confronted with their colossal carelessness around the globe and here at home, their mantra was, as Rummy put it, "Stuff happens."

Now reality, in all its messy, crazy, funky glory, has flooded the party, in the comely, crackling form of Sarah Palin.

Unable to stop the onslaught of wild soap opera storylines erupting from the Palin family and the Alaska wilderness, McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt offered caterwauling reporters a new mantra: "Life happens."

Indeed, it does. Only four days into her reign as John McCain's "soul mate," or "Trophy Vice," as some bloggers are calling her, on the ticket known as "Maverick Squared," Palin, the governor of Alaska, has already accrued two gates (Troopergate and Broken-watergate), a lawyer (for Troopergate), a future son-in-law named Levi (a high school ice hockey player, described by New York magazine as "sex on skates"), and a National Enquirer headline about the "Teen Prego Crisis" with 17-year-old daughter Bristol.

It seems like a long time since Vice President Dan Quayle denounced Murphy Brown for having a baby out of wedlock, bemoaning a "poverty of values." It also seems like a long time - and another McCain ago - that Republicans supporting W. smeared the old John McCain by spreading rumors that he had fathered an illegitimate black child.

This week, the anti-abortion forces celebrated the news of Bristol's pregnancy, using it as further proof that their beloved Governor Palin - who will no more support sex education than polar bears - was committed to the cause.

Since John McCain played craps first and sent the vetters to Alaska afterward, Republicans have been defending Governor Palin by saying that, while she has no foreign policy experience - except, as Cindy McCain pointed out, that "Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia" - she has a lot of domestic policy experience as a supercharged P.T.A. and hockey mom.

As more and more titillating details spill out about the Palins, Republicans riposte by simply arguing that things like Todd's old D.U.I. arrest or Sarah's messy family vengeance story will just let them relate better to average Americans - unlike the lofty Obamas.

"If this doesn't resonate with every woman in America, I'll eat my hat," Bill Noll, an Alaska delegate whose daughter got pregnant at a young age and kept the baby, told The Times's Ashley Parker.

Even as they push Sarah Barracuda as the glamorous but tough hunting and fishing mom who can juggle it all - she's the only nominee, as Fred Thompson bragged in his convention speech, "who knows how to properly field dress a moose" - they rant at reporters who wonder how she will juggle it all and question some of her judgments.

At a Washington, Pa., rally on Saturday, as her two other daughters stood with her, Ms. Palin left Bristol baby-sitting Trig, who has Down syndrome. "Then we have our daughter Bristol," the new conservative Republican star said. "She's on the bus with the newborn. ... It's his naptime, so he is with his big sister on the bus. But we thank them for being here."

And this while Bristol was still absorbing the shocking news that she was about to turn into tabloid roadkill - and oh, yeah, she's getting married sooner rather than later.

When you make a gimmicky pick of an unknown, without proper vetting, there's bound to be a sticky press conference sooner or later. I watched it happen with Ferraro and Quayle, and I watched Mondale and Poppy Bush curdle with embarrassment but plow through.

The political unknowns, of course, want that tantalizing brass ring, so they're not always completely forthcoming about their skeletons, if they're lucky enough to be ineptly vetted. This is ironic, since the nominee who gets blindsided with these crises - Did McCain really know that this Palin reality show was about to pop and swallow his convention - is presenting them to voters as the most trustworthy people to inherit the nuclear codes.

Because Ferraro grabbed at the chance, without revealing to Mondale's incompetent vetting team how damaging some of her husband's financial imbroglios could be, she went from being a female icon to part of the reason it's taken a quarter-century for another party to take a chance on a woman.

When McCain gets in trouble, he pulls out the P.O.W. card. Now Republicans are pulling out the sexist card.

Hillary cried sexism to cover up her incompetent management of her campaign, and now Republicans have picked up that trick. But when you use sexism as an across-the-board shield for any legitimate question, you only hurt women. And that's just another splash of reality.

By Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, September 2, 2008

ST. PAUL - A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain's choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state's public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge.

Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin's background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin.

Although the McCain campaign said that Mr. McCain had known about Bristol Palin's pregnancy before he asked her mother to join him on the ticket and that he did not consider it disqualifying, top aides were vague on Monday about how and when he had learned of the pregnancy, and from whom.

While there was no sign that her formal nomination this week was in jeopardy, the questions swirling around Ms. Palin on the first day of the Republican National Convention, already disrupted by Hurrincane Gustav, brought anxiety to Republicans who worried that Democrats would use the selection of Ms. Palin to question Mr. McCain's judgment and his ability to make crucial decisions.

At the least, Republicans close to the campaign said it was increasingly apparent that Ms. Palin had been selected as Mr. McCain's running mate with more haste than McCain advisers initially described.

Up until midweek last week, some 48 to 72 hours before Mr. McCain introduced Ms. Palin at a Friday rally in Dayton, Ohio, Mr. McCain was still holding out the hope that he could choose a good friend, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, a Republican close to the campaign said. Mr. McCain had also been interested in another favorite, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania.

But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates.

Perhaps more important, several Republicans said, Mr. McCain was getting advice that if he did not do something to shake up the race, his campaign would be stuck on a potentially losing trajectory.

With time running out - and as Mr. McCain discarded two safer choices, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as too predictable - he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later. Advisers to Mr. Pawlenty and another of the finalists on Mr. McCain's list described an intensive vetting process for those candidates that lasted one to two months.

"They didn't seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before," said a Republican close to the campaign. "This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn't get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge."

In the final stages, two Republicans familiar with the process said, Mr. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, emerged as a key advocate for Ms. Palin.

Mr. McCain's advisers said repeatedly on Monday that Ms. Palin was "thoroughly vetted," a process that would have included a review of all financial and legal records as well as a criminal background check. A McCain aide said the campaign was well aware of the ethics investigation and had looked into it.

"It was obviously something that anybody Googling Sarah Palin knew was in the news and there was a very thorough vetting done on that and also on the daughter," the aide said.

People familiar with the process said Ms. Palin had responded to a standard form with more than 70 questions. Although The Washington Post quoted advisers to Mr. McCain on Sunday as saying Ms. Palin had been subjected to an F.B.I. background check, an F.B.I. official said Monday the bureau did not vet potential candidates and had not known of her selection until it was made public.

Mark Salter, Mr. McCain's closest adviser, said in an e-mail message that Ms. Palin had been interviewed by Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., a veteran Washington lawyer in charge of the vice-presidential vetting process for Mr. McCain, as well as by other lawyers who worked for Mr. Culvahouse. Mr. Salter did not respond to an e-mail message asking if Ms. Palin had told Mr. Culvahouse and his lawyers that her daughter was pregnant.

In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Ms. Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.

"They didn't speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn't speak to anyone in the business community," said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

"I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called," Ms. Phillips said. "I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven't found anybody who was asked anything."

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin's background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. "I heard not a word, not a single contact," he said.

A number of Republicans said the McCain campaign had to some degree tied its hands in its effort to keep the selection process so secret.

"If you really want it to be a surprise, the circle of people that you're going to allow to know about it is going to be small, and that's just the nature of it," said Dan Bartlett, a former counselor to President Bush.

Former McCain strategists disagreed on whether it would have been useful for Ms. Palin's name to have been more publicly floated before her selection so that issues like the trooper investigation and her daughter's pregnancy might have already been aired and not seemed so new at the time of her announcement.

"It's a risk," said Dan Schnur, a former McCain aide who now directs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "No matter how great the candidate, it's a significant risk to put someone on the ticket" who hasn’t been publicly scrutinized.

"They obviously felt it was worth the risk to rev up the base and potentially reach out to Clinton supporters," Mr. Schnur said.

By Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, September 1, 2008

John McCain's surprise selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate raises two obvious questions: What does she do for McCain's chances of winning? And, more important, what would she do for America if elected?

As for the first question, most of the instant analysis focused on Palin's potential to attract votes from Hillary Clinton's disaffected core. But Palin's staunchly conservative views on abortion, gun control and teaching creationism in schools make her an unlikely fit for those voters.

USA TODAY , September 02, 2008

ST. PAUL

John McCain is not a normal conservative. He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government. He's a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda. As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

The main axis in McCain's worldview is not left-right. It's public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness - whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska's Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that's the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain's brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to - not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

So my worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience. She seems like a marvelous person. She is a dazzling political performer. And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent. On Monday, an ugly feeding frenzy surrounded her daughter's pregnancy. But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain's primary weakness - that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems - the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety - are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

McCain is certainly capable of practicing the politics of compromise and coalition-building. He engineered a complex immigration bill with Ted Kennedy and global warming legislation with Joe Lieberman. But if you are going to lead a vast administration as president, it really helps to have a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn't do, a set of communicable priorities.

If McCain is elected, he will face conditions tailor-made to foster disorder. He will be leading a divided and philosophically exhausted party. There simply aren't enough Republican experts left to staff an administration, so he will have to throw together a hodgepodge with independents and Democrats. He will confront Democratic majorities that will be enraged and recriminatory.

On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors - the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn't have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain's strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

By David Brooks, The New York Times, September 1, 2008

There was much talk about change last week at the Democratic convention. But are the Democrats really offering any substantive change?

To find out, I pulled out John Kerry's 2004 Democratic national platform and compared its fiscal policy with that contained in today's Barack Obama-inspired missive.

The documents are so similar it's creepy. While there are a number of new minor policies, and fresh details on old targets such as health care, the big picture has stayed the same.

When Democrats say they offer change, what they really mean is that things will be different if voters accept the policies they rejected last time.

To be fair, there are some alterations this year.

Both platforms promise to extend the Bush income-tax cuts for the middle class, but repeal them for the rich. In 2004, Kerry defined rich as those making more than $200,000. Today, Obama promises not to increase taxes on anyone making less than $250,000.

So the definition of rich has increased from $200,000 to $250,000. That's change you can believe in that will be especially appreciated by everyone making between $200,000 and $249,999.

The 2004 platform proposed a big increase in the earned- income tax credit, or EITC, which provides refunds for the poorest working Americans. The centerpiece of the 2008 platform is a radical new idea to help the poorest Americans: an increase in the EITC.

Augmenting the EITC increase in 2004 was a proposal to "pay for child care and eldercare.'' This time around, there is a promise to "help pay for child care.'' There is no mention of helping to pay for the elderly, but that is probably just an oversight, unless jettisoning the elderly is change we can believe in.

Silly Language

The platforms for 2004 and 2008 both promise to change the tax code to make it less rewarding for U.S. corporations to locate operations abroad. Back then, Kerry promised also to reduce the corporate-tax rate a smidgen, an acknowledgment that the U.S.'s high taxes were undermining our competitiveness.

This convention's plan has ditched that carrot, and replaced it with the silliest passage in platform history: "We will bring together government, private industry, workers, and academia to turn around the manufacturing sector.'' Obama's plan to help the manufacturing sector appears to be, "Unleash the bureaucrats and professors.''

Like this year's version, the 2004 energy platform emphasized expanding government investment in alternative energies and tougher fuel-economy standards. The biggest change seems to be an edit to the 2004 platform.

Oil, Social Security

Back then, when oil cost $40 a barrel, Democrats were willing to concede that it might be a good idea to allow some exploration, saying, "We support balanced development of domestic oil supplies in areas already open for exploration, like the western and central Gulf of Mexico.'' This time around, with oil trading at about $115 a barrel, the word "exploration'' appears only in reference to outer space.

For Social Security, both platforms promise to protect it, and not to privatize it. The platform this time around also advocates automatic enrollment for 401(k)s, a sound policy idea that has strong academic support.

Back in 2004, the platform promised to use "pay-as-you- go,'' or paygo, budget rules to enforce fiscal discipline. Such rules were, of course, adopted in 2007 by the new Democratic Congress. The result was hardly spectacular, as the deficit increased from $248 billion in 2006 to a projected $357 billion for 2008, in part because Congress voted to ignore its own rules when it became inconvenient.

Old Promises

This failure had no impact on the 2008 platform, which again promises tough paygo rules. It isn't clear why we should believe that the rules will be more effective the next time around. After all, it wasn't George W. Bush who voted to ignore the paygo rules; it was the Democratic Congress.

So when you line it up, the call for change is really just a call to enact those things Democrats have been promising for oh-so-many years.

The failure to offer substantive change is important because it suggests a disconnect between the message and the reality. A candidate who provides a new perspective on the causes of our government's myriad failures, with compelling solutions, might have a chance to bring positive change to Washington.

A candidate who rehashes old entrenched positions and calls it "change'' is really just calling for more effective partisanship and the annihilation of his political enemies. That idea might thrill Democrats, but it is hardly the kind of post- partisanship voters are seeking.

By Kevin Hassett, Bloomberg, September 2, 2008

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. - Have American presidential politics become so hateful that a pregnant 17-year-old girl has to have the intimate details of her life exposed to the nation by character assassins?

Ask the left-wing Internet haters, the anonymous propagandists who call themselves bloggers on the Daily Kos.

And ask Bristol Palin, who didn't deserve it, and was a victim of the rumor-mongers consumed with attacking her mother, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican running mate of Sen. John McCain, because the mother is a conservative and opposes abortion.

The Internet rumors claimed that Sarah's baby, Trig, born four months ago with Down syndrome, wasn't really hers but her daughter's. They plucked some photos from the Internet, photos out of sequence, to make it appear as though Gov. Palin hadn't been pregnant, proving once again that on the Internet, the casualties are credibility and civility. Reading it, you could almost hear the saliva dripping from their teeth as they typed anonymously.

"Sarah Palin is NOT The Mother" cried one Daily Kos blogger who goes by a screen name ArcXIX. "Attention! Read The Follow-Up too! BabyGate: Explosive New Details.

"Now, I've known liars all my life," the blogger wrote. "Their single core problem is not with themselves, but those around them. If they're never called out on their twisting of truths and fabrications, they simply continue to make larger lies. Well Sarah, I'm calling you a liar and not even a good one. Trig Paxson Van Palin is not your son. He is your grandson. The sooner you come forward with this revelation to the public, the better."

I don't know if Komodo dragons can type, but their mouths are so full of bacteria that if they bite your leg you'll likely die. This anonymous Komodo was probably in mommy's basement, perhaps with a bowl of Chex Mix and a Diet Coke nearby.

Unfortunately for big lizard and the other haters, it wasn't true. But it did force Sarah and Todd Palin to come out with a statement on Monday. That's how Bristol was exposed.

"We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our hearts and mean everything to us," Sarah and Todd Palin said. "Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support."

The parents say their daughter will marry the young man. It would most likely have come out anyway, given the determination of Sarah Palin's opponents to make her out to be a hypocrite. But the way it became public was cruel. Now they're saying her mom's at fault for preaching abstinence to her children.

When I was just starting out as a reporter, a wise old newspaper man told me his rule: Don't ever write about their kids. Leave the kids alone, unless the child runs for office, or pulls down some fat government contract, or if the parent hauls them out as a shield before an indictment. Leave them alone, he said, because the kids don't deserve it, because they're civilians.

I took that to heart. And I know what it's like to be on the receiving end. Some of you may remember that, years ago, white political thugs under federal investigation for city affirmative-action contract fraud - who had connections to both the mob and City Hall - asked me about my children.

The thugs came up to me in a restaurant and asked why they never saw my little boys playing outside my house. They let me know they were interested in my kids. The thugs showed me their teeth, as if smiling, but their eyes weren't smiling. It was a message. It didn't work, and I wrote about it. And I'll never forget the thousands of e-mails and letters and calls that came to me from readers, many offering to stand in my driveway and watch out for my sons. My wife and I will never, ever forget your kindness.

This week marks the second time children have been targeted by those who don't like John McCain. And before his supporters on the political right puff up in indignation over what happened to the Palins, they should remember what the right did to McCain in 2000.

The victim was his daughter Bridget, found by Cindy McCain at Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought to the U.S. for medical treatment and adopted. In the South Carolina primary, anonymous McCain opponents used a telephone "push poll" across the state, asking voters what they thought of McCain's "illegitimate" black child. McCain lost South Carolina, and the Republican nomination.

Who was the beneficiary?

George Bush.

So the crooked blade swings from the right and the left. The use of children as a weapon leaves a terrible stain, on the kids, on the losing candidates, on the winners, and on all of us.




By John Kass, Chicago Tribune, September 2, 2008

With Barack Obama already established as a skillful rhetorician, people keep asking me, a former White House speechwriter, about John McCain. Can he say anything -- anything at all -- that might place him in the company of Ronald Reagan, the president for whom I used to work?

The answer, I believe, is yes. Before I explain, I need to note one way Sen. McCain has already placed himself alongside President Reagan: by being wildly underestimated.

As recently as July 4, even the most loyal Republicans privately expected the summer to go badly for their candidate. Sen. Obama had already opened a lead over Mr. McCain. He would proceed to raise far more money than his opponent and then spend heavily on advertising, increasing his lead. Reaching Denver ahead by five or 10 points, Mr. Obama would leave with a lead well into double digits. Republicans would then find themselves preparing to undergo the exquisite agony in St. Paul of putting up a brave front while the mainstream media looked on and chortled.

None of that happened.

Mr. Obama did indeed raise more money than Mr. McCain, but by much less than expected. His advertising proved insipid -- during the Olympics, you could have been forgiven for confusing his ads with those from General Electric -- while Mr. McCain's advertising proved pointed, funny and memorable. Reaching Denver only even in the polls, Mr. Obama left with a lead in single, not double, digits, experiencing only a modest bounce. And as Republicans began gathering for their convention this past weekend, restaurants and dining rooms throughout the Twin Cities resounded with the whooping and cackling of the suddenly reprieved.

Two factors contributed to this astonishing turnaround. One has already been widely remarked upon: the uneven performance of Mr. Obama.

In Berlin, he whipped a couple of hundred thousand Germans into a screaming fit by delivering a speech that would have proven flawless if only he had been running for president of the European Union. In Orange County, he answered a question about abortion from Pastor Rick Warren by languidly remarking that the matter was "above my pay grade."

The other factor is so unexpected -- so difficult for the chattering classes to assimilate -- that it is only now gaining recognition. John McCain has been good. Really very, very good.

While his 47-year-old opponent spent more than a week early last month resting up in Hawaii, the septuagenarian Mr. McCain remained on the campaign trail, displaying his energies by speaking half a dozen times a day. Later in the month, answering the same questions from Pastor Warren, Mr. McCain conveyed stature and gravity while Mr. Obama did not.

And last week, when he named as his running mate Sarah Palin of Alaska -- a pro-life, gun-owning mother of five who got elected to the governor's mansion by running against the GOP establishment -- Mr. McCain accomplished a remarkable feat. He electrified the conservative base of the Republican Party while appealing to reform-minded Independents. Finally, by scaling back the Republican convention because of Hurricane Gustav, putting the nation's interests above partisan politics, he's shown himself to be -- first and foremost -- a public servant.

Why has Mr. McCain's performance proven so startling? So thoroughly unexpected? Ronald Reagan was underestimated because many scarcely knew him. He rose to prominence when California was remote from the media centers of Washington and New York. Mr. McCain was underestimated because many observers already know him so well. At least they thought they did.

The John McCain of 2008, journalists and activists understandably assumed, would be the same man they encountered during the campaign of 2000. The irreverent, wisecracking John McCain. The John McCain who cared about the good opinion of reporters at least as much as he cared about the good opinion of Republican voters. The John McCain who had proven -- let's face it -- unserious. Why expect anything different this time around?

In the set of his jaw, the cast of his eyes, and the whole attitude of utter sobriety he displays whenever he discusses foreign policy, Mr. McCain has provided the answer. In 2000 the country was still enjoying the untroubled decade that followed the Cold War. Today it faces warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, an Iran racing to acquire nuclear weapons and a North Korea that has already done so, a Russia intent on reclaiming its old empire, a China busy devoting heaping portions of its new wealth to its armed forces, and the constant, inescapable threat of another terrorist attack.

If he sometimes treated his 2000 campaign as a mere attempt to move up the ladder, Mr. McCain treats this campaign as a duty. And this, I think, represents the underlying reason Mr. McCain has been able to defy the odds, keeping the presidential race wide open. Whereas Mr. Obama remains a complicated, enigmatic figure -- in the profile it published the day he delivered his acceptance speech, the New York Times called him "elusive" -- Mr. McCain has come into focus, becoming a candidate voters can understand.

The man is a patriot. Grasp that and you have grasped John McCain. Refusing 40 years ago to accept early release from his imprisonment in the Hanoi Hilton and running for president today -- both are of a piece. Seen in this light, even Mr. McCain's shortcomings make a certain kind of sense. McCain-Feingold? Bad legislation. But you can almost understand why he backed it.

Mr. McCain sees the money sloshing around Washington as an insult to America -- and he takes such insults personally. Patriot though he is, Mr. McCain is too imbued with the military ethic (which of course eschews ostentatious displays) to trumpet his patriotism.

And this brings me back to the question with which I started. To place himself in the company of President Reagan, I believe, Mr. McCain need only overcome his inhibitions for an hour, using his acceptance speech on Thursday night to tell the American people about his feelings for this Republic.

Between his relief efforts for the victims of Gustav and the fund raising for the GOP that falls to him as the new leader of the party, Mr. McCain might simply sit down for a few moments today or tomorrow, ponder the following quotation, then holler to his speechwriters to sit down and take notes while he renders the ideas it conveys into his own words. "I have always believed," said Ronald Reagan, "that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage."

Mr. Obama may be able to offer voters all the attractions of high rhetoric, but Mr. McCain can offer something else: an uncomplicated love of country.

By PETER ROBINSON, The Wall Street Journal, September 2, 2008

The world has been moving John McCain's way over the past year. The success of the "surge" in Iraq has helped his cause. So has the Russian invasion of Georgia. On both issues, the Republican candidate for the presidency took positions that now look prescient and courageous.

More generally, the sense that the world is getting more dangerous helps Republicans in general - and a tough, experienced, military man such as Mr McCain in particular. Why take the risk of electing a neophyte such as Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate?

Opinion polls consistently show that the American public has more faith in Mr McCain as commander-in-chief. He looks like the safe choice for dangerous times.

But this is wrong. Mr McCain will not run a "safe" foreign policy. He adores rolling the dice. His decision to select Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate typifies the man. It is a big risk. It could turn out to be inspired. Or it might turn out to be a disaster. But it is not "safe".

Mr McCain approaches international affairs in the same spirit. His instinct is always to take the radical option and to march towards the sound of gunfire.

It was indeed courageous to back the idea of sending more troops to Iraq, at a time when the war was going so badly. But it was the same instinct to choose the bold, aggressive option that made Mr McCain such an enthusiastic backer of the Iraq war in the first place. Indeed, he was arguing for the invasion of Iraq well before the terror attacks on New York and Washington. That now looks reckless.

The Georgian crisis also looks, at first sight, like a vindication for Mr McCain. He has been a longstanding critic of the Russian government. He saw the crisis in Georgia coming a long time ago.

When I visited Georgia last April I discovered that President Mikheil Saakashvili counted Mr McCain as one of his closest friends and allies. Mr Saakashvili told me (with a laugh) that the South Ossetians - whose rebel enclave he later attacked, with such disastrous consequences - had even shot a missile at a helicopter carrying Cindy McCain, the Senator's wife. And the Georgian president told me proudly that Mr McCain had given him a gift - a bullet-proof vest.

Even at the time, this struck me as an ambiguous present. Was it saying, I'm behind you all the way; or was it saying, best of luck, I'll be cheering for you - from a safe distance? Now that Georgia has been so severely mauled by Russia, the dangerous ambiguities in the policies pushed by Mr McCain and the Bush administration are even clearer. The Georgians were flattered, hugged and trained by the Americans. But when the Russian tanks rolled in, there was little the west could do.

Mr McCain says that President Teddy Roosevelt is one of his heroes. But Mr McCain's proclamation in the aftermath of the Russia's invasion - that "we are all Georgians now" - was the opposite of Roosevelt's famous advice to "speak softly and carry a big stick". It was tough talk, with very little to back it up.

Mr McCain's failure to spell out the implications of his strong rhetorical support for Georgia may mean that he has failed to think things through - or just that he does not want to alarm voters. But the Republican needs to answer some difficult questions.

Is the US really prepared to fight Russia to protect Georgia and Ukraine - as Mr McCain's firm support for swift Nato membership for these countries implies? Are we entering a new cold war, as his determination to isolate Russia suggests? If the tough talk is not backed up by tough action, what does that do to American credibility?

Mr McCain's instinct certainly is to confront Russia - and indeed China. Even before the conflict in Georgia, he was arguing for throwing Russia out of the Group of Eight and forming a new League of Democracies.

Mr McCain's confrontational instincts are even more to the fore when it comes to Iran. He has said that the only thing worse than a war with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran. Taken at face value - and given what we know of Iran's nuclear programme - that sounds like a commitment to attack Iran within the first term of a McCain presidency.

The Obama camp argue that Mr McCain will simply continue with the policies of President George W. Bush. The comparison is certainly interesting. In some ways, Mr McCain is a more reassuring figure - because he is curious and has thought hard about foreign policy for many years. But in other respects, Mr McCain might make Mr Bush look like a cautious softie. It was Mr McCain, not Mr Bush, who was the favourite of the neo-conservative wing of the Republican party, when the two men ran against each for the Republican nomination in 2000. Mr McCain's policies on Iran, Russia and China are more hawkish even than those of the Bush administration.

Then there is the matter of temperament. Mr Bush is a sunny and optimistic person. Mr McCain is funnier, darker and angrier. Mr Bush steered clear of Vietnam. Mr McCain really is a warrior, whose autobiography begins "I was born into a tradition of military service" - and whose books are full of brooding reflections on the nature of honour.

In international crises, the character and instincts of the American president are critical. Mr Obama is by temperament a cautious, pragmatic conciliator. Mr McCain is aggressive, unorthodox and radical.

Sometimes, of course, the radical choice is the right one. Mr McCain would be an interesting choice for president. But safe? Forget about it.

By Gideon Rachman, The Financial Times, September 1 2008

The potential political consequences of Sarah Palin have been chewed over from every imaginable angle.

Though there is plenty to ponder, one thing is certain: libertarian-inclined voters should be encouraged. No, I'm not suggesting that your little Molly will be bringing home "The Road to Serfdom" from her (distinctly non-public) elementary school. But in contrast to any national candidate in recent memory, Palin is the one that exudes the economic and cultural sensibilities of a geniune Western-style libertarian.

Now, Palin's lack of experience has been framed as an impenetrable negative. One wire story helpfully noted that Palin had never ever appeared on "Meet the Press." Shocking! But as Barack Obama often notes, it's not about experience, it's about judgment. And Palin's penchant for reform-minded conservatism is certainly at odds with the racket Washington Republicans have offered up the past 8 years.

Palin, for example, vetoed 300 pork projects in Alaska in her first year in office. She made a habit of knocking out big-government Republicans in her brief political career. For this, the 44-year-old mother of five enjoys a sterling approval rating in a state with arguably the nation's most libertarian-minded populace.

When it comes to healthcare, Palin says she wants to "allow free-market competition and reduce onerous government regulation." These days, any mention of the "free market" that's not framed as a crass pejorative is a sign of progress.

Culturally, there is little for the Heartland to dislike. By now, you've probably seen picture or two of Palin sporting a rifle. Apparently, she's left carcasses strewn across the Alaskan wilderness. In some places -- areas where the nation is growing -- owning a gun is not yet a sin. And unlike Obama, Palin seems to believe that the Second Amendment means the exact same thing in rural Alaska as it does in the streets of Chicago.

Yes, Palin is without argument a staunch social conservative. She is fervently opposed to abortion - even in cases of rape and incest, which will raise eyebrows, but is certainly more philosophically consistent than the namby pambyism of your average politician. The choice issue, after all, is complicated, even for many libertarians. And, as I was recently reminded, Ron Paul, the Libertarian champion of the 21st century, also opposes abortion.

Even when advocating for "moral" issues, Palin's approach is a soft sell. Palin does not support gay marriage (neither does Obama, it should be noted). Yet, in 2006, Palin's first veto as Governor was a bill that sought to block state employee benefits and health insurance for same-sex couples.

We cannot bore into Palin's soul to see her true feelings about gay couples, but, at the time, she noted that signing "this bill would be in direct violation of my oath of office" because it was unconstitutional. For most libertarians, the thought of politician following any constitution, rather than their own predilections, morality or the "common good," is a nice change of pace.

On the counterproductive War on Drugs, Palin is no warrior. Her Republican opponent in 2006 primary, incumbent Republican governor Frank Murkowski, made recriminalizing the possession of small amounts of pot a priority. Palin, though she does not support legalization, believes enforcement should be a high priority.

"I can't claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled," Palin once said. This sort of honesty is a welcome change from the standard hand-wringing about marijuana's supposed disastrous consequences.

On education, Palin supports school-choice programs. There have already been smears that she backed "creationist" teaching in "public" schools, when in fact, Palin's comment regarding intelligent design should hold some appeal to libertarians. Even if you find the idea inane, in essence, Palin pushed the idea that parents, rather than the state, should decide what children are learning.

When asked about this commotion, Palin said, "I won't have religion as a litmus test, or anybody's personal opinion on evolution or creationism." If lockstep left-wing union-run school boards in urban districts would follow this sound advice on ideological litmus tests, our educational system would be a lot more productive.

Then there is a question of authenticity. And it matters. Those who will do anything for power, will say anything and support any position that is convenient. From John McCain to Joe Biden to Obama, one gets the sense that political office is their life's work. All of them have made attempts to create the perception that, hey, they're ordinary Americans just like you. Palin won't have to work at genuineness. With Palin, you get the impression she can take politics or leave it. Her life certainly hasn't been saturated with policy, favor trading and back scratching.

Of course, Washington has a mysterious power to turn perfectly reasonable, wholesome, well-meaning human beings into equivocating crooked gasbags. But, from the little we know about Palin, such a transformation doesn't seem likely. And for libertarians - in the broadest sense of the small "l" word -- she's the best candidate they can expect.

By David Harsanyi, Real Clear Politics, September 2, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Has anyone noticed that Sarah Palin's central claim to political fame is a fraud? She represents herself as a fiscal conservative who abhors pork-barrel projects and said no thanks to the "bridge to nowhere" -- a $398 million span that would have linked Ketchikan, Alaska, to its airport across the Tongass Narrows. But as mayor of Wasilla (pop. 9,780), she hired a Washington lobbyist to bring home the bacon. And just two years ago as a candidate for governor, she supported both the Ketchikan bridge and the congressional earmark that would have paid most of its cost.

I know, we're not supposed to pay attention to such inconvenient details. We're supposed to be dazzled by how unaffected she is, how plain-spoken, how "genuine."

Indeed, if you don't get hung up on her actual record, Palin simply is who she is. It's not her fault that she's a former Miss Wasilla with a campy "Northern Exposure" vibe, doctrinaire social-conservative views and no discernible qualifications for being vice president. It's undeniable that people in Alaska apparently like her well enough, though they seem to have been even more shocked than the rest of us when she was named to the Republican ticket. In any event, she's not the one who created this farcical situation.

We learned last week that John McCain is not who he is -- not, at least, who he claims to be. The steady, straight-talking, country-first statesman his campaign has been selling is a fictional character. The real McCain is eith