Stephen Dinan, Washington Times
Sen. John McCain kicked off his general election campaign Tuesday night with a message seemingly ripped from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political playbook and in a location - just outside New Orleans - that highlights the biggest domestic failure of President Bush’s tenure.
In agreeing that this year has become “a change election,” Mr. McCain adopted the vanquished Mrs. Clinton’s critique of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama as incapable of delivering the change he has promised.
“Both Senator Obama and I promise we will end Washington’s stagnant, unproductive partisanship.But one of us has a record of working to do that and one of us doesn’t,” Mr. McCain said in Kenner, La. “For all his fine words and all his promise, he has never taken the hard but right course of risking his own interests for yours - of standing against the partisan rancor on his side to stand up for our country.”
Mr. McCain, who three months ago garnered the number of delegates needed to win the Republican presidential nomination, heaped praise on Mrs. Clinton of New York as a friend and an inspiration to his three daughters, and made his most explicit appeal yet for crossover voters. He said part of that appeal is his willingness to repeatedly fight his own party.
Speaking again of the senator from Illinois, Mr. McCain said, “He is an impressive man, who makes a great first impression. But he hasn’t been willing to make the tough calls, to challenge his party, to risk criticism from his supporters to bring real change to Washington. I have.”
