McCain takes aim at Obama

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain this week launched his general-election battle against Barack Obama by portraying the Democrat as an inexperienced, out-of-touch liberal who lacks the courage to take unpopular stands. In a prime-time speech at a New Orleans rally, delivered on the very night Obama claimed victory in the Democratic primary fight, the 71-year-old Arizona senator said Obama had neither the experience nor the right ideas to set the nation on a better course. “The choice is between the right change and the wrong change; between moving forward and going backward,” McCain said. He cited Obama’s pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq as an example, saying it would reverse the hard-fought progress of the past year and lead to chaos.

Directly addressing Obama’s oft-repeated claim that McCain is running for “a third Bush term,” McCain ticked off a list of policies on which he clashed with President Bush, including the conduct of the war in Iraq, treatment of detainees, and global warming. He also was dismissive of Obama’s vow to set aside partisanship and overcome gridlock in Washington. “One of us has a record working to do that,” McCain said, “and one of us doesn’t.”

McCain now has one overarching challenge, said James Carney in Time.com: proving that he is not “McBush.” That’s why in his speech McCain highlighted what is, in fact, his “long record of bucking his party and his president.” Still, on the three issues voters care about most—the economy, ending the war in Iraq, and health care—“it’s hard to make the case that he is charting a course different from Bush’s.” And that could prove to be McCain’s undoing.

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George Bush may be the least of McCain’s problems, said Michael Cohen in Politico.com. As Obama and Hillary Clinton have been slugging it out, McCain has had more than three months to “lay out a compelling narrative for his candidacy.” The fact that he failed to do so when he essentially had no opposition does not bode well for him now that he is facing the battle-hardened Obama.

This week, though, McCain has risen smartly to the challenge, said Kathleen Parker in National Review Online. In his speech, he shrewdly lavished praise on Hillary Clinton, saying that she “deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes received,” and that she’s shown his three daughters and all women that “there is no opportunity in this great country beyond their reach.” McCain clearly understands that all those “disenfranchised Democratic women voters may be inclined to trust him more than they do the party elders who threw them under the Prius.” This could get very interesting.