Obama slams McCain, lists presidential to-do list

BY NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON | nia.henderson@newsday.com

11:50 PM EDT, August 28, 2008

DENVER - Bearing the weight of history, Barack Obama Thursday night vowed to protect America's shores from harm, to renew the country's promise at home by focusing on the middle class and to end the Iraq war -- while leveling a sharp critique of his opponent, John McCain.

It was a moment many in the crowd of 75,000 said they never imagined they'd live to see -- the first black man in American history standing to accept his party's nomination. They waved flags, snapped pictures and held signs that simply said "Change."

Obama entered this convention with declining poll numbers, the threat of a fractured party, and calls to make change more specific and get tougher on John McCain.

In laying out specific plans -- affordable health care, tax cuts for 95 percent of all working families, a new energy strategy and expanded educational opportunities -- he contrasted his plans with McCain's and grounded his plans around the stories of people he met in his 19-month campaign, aiming for intimacy through anecdotes.

He spoke of lost jobs, forgotten cities and vulnerable veterans, and the need for a more generous nation.

"America, we are better than these last eight years," he said. "We are a better country than this."

In many ways, his speech was a continuation of the one he made four years ago. He opened with his parents -- a white Kansas mother and black Kenyan father who believed he could do anything -- and then laid out the case for his candidacy, linking John McCain to the "the broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush"

"This moment -- this election -- is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive," he said. "And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

Obama harshly criticized McCain, providing a sharp contrast between their policies, but he also struck a centrist note, calling for a more reasoned discussion of hot-button issues like gun, gay and abortion rights, and a less program-heavy approach to solving other domestic problems.

On the foreign policy front, he called for a time frame for troop withdrawal from Iraq, expanded diplomacy and a stepped-up effort in Afghanistan, arguing that the "Bush-McCain" foreign policy amounted to merely tough talk and bad strategy and has squandered America's legacy.

"John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell -- but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives," he said. "That's not the judgment we need. That won't keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past."

John McCain, acknowledging the history of the moment, took a break from campaigning to congratulate his opponent in a one-time television ad. "How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day," he said. "Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight, senator, job well done."

Obama wrote the speech in longhand and in crafting it by studying acceptance speeches dating back to Franklin D. Roosevelt's.

In his closing, he ended with the words of Martin Luther King Jr. -- without mentioning him by name -- whose movement made his story possible, a clear acknowledgment that his journey to Denver didn't just begin on a cold Illinois day in February, but long before.

"America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future," he said. "Let us keep that promise -- that American promise -- and in the words of Scripture, hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess."