Sen. John McCain gave the most important speech of his life here tonight, accepting the presidential nomination he has so long sought from the Republican Party he has so long annoyed.
He got the nomination along with the plaudits of a series of speakers, including his wife, Cindy, hailing his patriotism, sacrifice, service to country, maverickness, values, bipartisanship, fighting spirit and some other really good things.
The right words were there in his speech, many of them familiar words he has uttered so many times the same way out on the trail to much smaller crowds than the national TV audience and some 20,000 rabid Republicans assembled here in the Xcel Energy Center.
It was the final act of the truncated Republican National Convention that got postponed by a hurricane far away and then got blown away by the performance of its first female vice presidential nominee since the party's founding in 1854.
McCain's 53-minute remarks, interrupted both by applause and three protesters, were all about Country First, the week's theme. (The full text of the speech is published below the jump.)
But also not surprising for a 72-year-old ex-pilot blown out of the sky 40 years ago by a missile the size of a phone pole. With numerous broken bones, he had 66 months and countless beatings to think about life and his country.
"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," McCain admitted.
It was one of the most heartfelt -- and powerful -- lines from a man who like many of his generation genuinely does not like to talk about himself, especially if it involves war. But he did tonight, telling....
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- We knew that last night's boffo speech to the Republican National Convention here by newly minted vice presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was a huge hit inside the house. The Ticket covered that many ways last night.
But now comes rush word that Rush Limbaugh --that's right, the Rushman, El Rushbo, the Rusher, who's been the self-appointed voice of broadcast conservatism to his many millions of faithful listeners -- has also been less than enthusiastic about the GOP presidential candidacy of Sen. John McCain.
But today, Sept. 4, 2008, a day that will go down in the annals of political history as one of the all-time greatest show biz flip-flops, Rush has fallen in love with Gov. Sarah.
I did not want that to end last night ... I didn’t want the night to end. I didn’t want Rudy to stop. What a night! Folks, we have a future beyond November here. Regardless what happens.... The convention has been unified on the basis of conservatism. Properly executed, beautifully articulated.
Believe me, Barack Obama has a lot to fear today and he knows it ... the drive-bys are in panic, the Democrat Party is in panic, the liberal left is in panic ... they do not know who hit them, they do not know how to respond to this.
This lady has turned it all around ... from now on, on this program John McCain will be known as John McBrilliant.
After CNN dominated coverage of the Democratic National Convention last week, Fox News regained the upper hand Tuesday night when the Republicans took the stage, drawing a bigger audience than any of its broadcast or cable news competitors.
Fox News attracted an average of 6.18 million viewers during the 7 p.m. PDT hour when Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman addressed the GOP gathering in St. Paul. NBC placed second with 4.47 million viewers, followed by CNN with 3.22 million, beating out ABC, CBS and MSNBC.
ST. PAUL -- It was a passionately partisan crowd. Its 20,000+ members were eager to love her. And after recent relentless days of negative stories about Sen. John McCain's pick for a running mate, the Republicans packing the Xcel Energy Center here were feeling besieged by an alien media, as the GOP has for decades.
But tonight for the first time in its more than 16-decade history, the Republican Party nominated a woman vice president, and fell in love with her at the same time.
Whether that translates into enough votes for the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket to win the White House on Nov. 4 will be decided in the next 61 days of campaigning. But for tonight among her own extensive family and among the GOP family assembled in this graceful old city named for a saint known for patience, Gov. Palin scored a rhetorical hat trick (a term any hockey mom would know).
At least inside the building.
We'll publish the historic speech's entire text below, along with some of our favorite lines.
Palin praised the top of the ticket for his courage and leadership. She vowed they'd reform a national capital that was once a swamp.
She delivered some pretty sharp elbows to the opposition's chin, as she did on the high school basketball court, where her nickname was Sarah Barracuda.
And she presented herself as a determined small-town mom aware of the needs and challenges of real American families.
The 44-year-old Palin had the presence of a former broadcaster, the poise of a former beauty contestant. The down-to-earthiness of a mom with five children, from 19 years old down to 4 months. And the realistic eye of a natural politician who knows the sales appeal of reform and the power of the pause.
And in doing so, Palin won the hearts of the delegates, who were but enthusiastic extras in the television drama transmitted into millions of homes. There, many Americans got their first impression of....
ST. PAUL -- Excitement is already beginning to mount in the convention hall for the arrival at tonight's podium of the first female ever on a Republican presidential ticket. All of the men in the 114-member Florida delegation, gentlemen all, have given their floor passes to the women in their lives.
Their spouses, daughters and other women now sit in the official delegation seats so that they can all rise as one to salute Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin when she arrives shortly to give her speech at the Republican National Convention.
As 35-year-old Jennifer Samuels, a Miramar homemaker standing in for her husband, explained, "She's very human. And I think a lot of women relate to that."
Like tonight's speakers, many of the delegates blamed members of the media for what they consider unfair initial coverage of Palin and her family.
Arlene Krings, an interior decorator from Fairway, Kan., complained that liberals in the press "ridiculed" Palin's pregnant teenage daughter, Bristol.
"I believe the only two groups that attack children are terrorists and liberals," she said.
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Fully 20% of Hollywood's Republican celebrities are gathered here this week to officially nominate John McCain as their party's presidential nominee and to make Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin his vice presidential running mate.
Jon Voight is that 20% (The other 80% that are out of the closet are Tom Selleck and his wife, Jillie Mack, Jerry Bruckheimer and Patricia Heaton).
The 69-year-old Voight tells The Ticket this afternoon in an exclusive video chat (see below) that he is enjoying himself immensely at the gathering, where the excitement level exploded with Friday's surprise naming of Palin as VP choice.
Voight is outspoken in his support of McCain -- "an amazing guy." He predicts the Arizona senator and former POW is going to keep the country "safe with prosperity" because he knows intimately about war and enemies and carries on his body today the scars of his imprisonment and torture.
Voight calls Palin "a beautiful choice" and praises "the pure simplicity of her poise and experience." He talks about meeting McCain's 95-year-old mother, Roberta -- "tough as nails."
And he gets a couple of shots in on the Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, as being the "least experienced of anyone who's ever run for president" and performing his Senate job "in a less than mediocre manner."
Oh, and for both Republican and Democratic movie fans, Voight also confirms there's a third "National Treasure" movie in the works.
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- One by one, two by two, then in quick streams, reporters Monday noon rushed down a curtained corridor on the print media floor at the Republican National Convention to swarm around one of the baldest men on the planet.
They couldn't believe their eyes. Just an hour or so after the bombshell news was put out by John McCain's campaign about the pregnancy of Gov. Sarah Palin's teenage daughter, there was the actual campaign manager himself, Steve Schmidt, walking right by.
He was quickly swarmed by media representatives with tiny tape recorders doing what excites them most, chasing a breaking news story on a day they thought would be dull.
Patiently, by and large, he answered question after question, some of them several times, pausing to appear to think as he crafted his responses. (See video below.)
Finally, after nearly a half-hour of pushing and shoving and competing to get questions in, Schmidt said he had to go. And walked off with a squad of newly-appointed Palin aides who'd been standing by not smiling.
The excited media, now fed new details, rushed off to write their stories and flash them out to the world.
Precisely as Schmidt hoped they would.
It was a classic, illustrative and instructive case of political damage control. Weeks ago one of the first things out of Palin's mouth when....
Perhaps legendary GOP political guru Karl Rove agreed. Or perhaps Rove, as he appeared before the Maine delegation to the Republican National Convention in Minnesota's Twin Cities, simply was in a dismissive mood.
Whatever, Rove offered this characterization of Biden: He's a "big blowhard doofus."
A blog that tracks the political ebb and flow in Maine, PolitickerME.com, has more on Biden's appearance.
-- Don Frederick
In this July 14, 2005 file photo,former White House advisor Karl Rove is shown in Washington. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, file)
Those quickly issuing statements reacting to the news that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant included James Dobson, head of the conservative Focus on the Family religious group, andBarack Obama.
Dobson, who has been noticeably cool toward John McCain's candidacy but was enthused by the Republican's selection of Palin as his running mate, had this to say:
In the 32-year history of Focus on the Family, we have offered prayer, counseling and resource assistance to tens of thousands of parents and children in the same situation the Palins are now facing.
We have always encouraged the parents to love and support their children and always advised the girls to see their pregnancies through, even though there will of course be challenges along the way.
That is what the Palins are doing, and they should be commended once again for not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances.
Being a Christian does not mean you're perfect. Nor does it mean your children are perfect. But it does mean there is forgiveness and restoration when we confess our imperfections to the Lord. I've been the beneficiary of that forgiveness and restoration in my own life countless times, as I'm sure the Palins have.
The media are already trying to spin this as evidence Gov. Palin is a 'hypocrite,' but all it really means is that she and her family are human. They are in my prayers and those of millions of Americans.
On the campaign trail, meanwhile, Obama commented....
Ladies and gentlemen, the Governor is in the house.
Sarah Palin, Alaska's governor but John McCain's new vice presidential partner, has arrived in St. Paul for the abbreviated Republican National Convention, where the selection of the relatively unknown 44-year-old mother of five has energized thousands of Republicans gathered for the GOP's first nomination of a female national candidate since its founding in 1854.
Not to mention easily erased any media mention of that celebratory night in Denver's Invesco Field -- when was it? -- a month ago.
It won't be a normal first day for the quadrennial party event. In deference to the immense circle of tumultuous tropical winds now known as Gustav, McCain canceled all first-day convention events save a perfunctory opening.
He said it was a time for Americans to be Americans together, not Republicans or Democrats. If Nature serves you a lemon, make lemonade.
We'll see what the rest of the week brings for scheduled events. For political purposes, to be honest, no one will say this out loud except the Ticket, but not having President Bush present to dominate a night's national TV coverage of McCain's convention is a fortunate byproduct of the schedule change.
But after a day of campaigning down south and in the Midwest with McCain, Palin arrived in St. Paul late last night with Cindy McCain, along with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Palin has no public events penciled in for today. But the presidential nominee's wife and sons are scheduled to have breakfast with the delegation of the possibly about-to-be storm-battered state of Louisiana. And wouldn't that be a swell time to bring along a surprise guest for a formal introduction?
We're just saying. (UPDATE: And we were wrong.)
According to Maria Comella, the pre-picked press secretary for Palin who used to work for a one-time Republican front-runner named Rudy Giuliani, Palin will spend the day in a mix of briefings, meetings with delegates and other governors and working on her acceptance speech for Wednesday night.
With her husband, Todd, and four of their five children en route to Alaska, Palin has reportedly already put some words to paper. Or into a laptop. Whatever.
Her fifth "child," Track, who's 19, is in the Army preparing for deployment to Iraq in two weeks while his mom prepares to deploy to political battleground states back home, with a special emphasis on the West, if our guess is right.
Oh, jeez, here we go already. With the canny, seemingly good-natured-but-really-a-put-down jokes about a female candidate.
The lone female is gone from the Democratic race; they can't use the old pantsuits laugher anymore. So Joe Biden trotted out the subtly dismissive, isn't-she-pretty line about you-know-who, the newbie on the Republican side. (Translation: There's really nothing else to her to comment about, but I won't say that because I'm not a sexist.)
We wonder how this goes down with those millions of female Hillary Clinton supporters whom both sides covet.
“There’s a gigantic difference between John McCain and Barack Obamaand between me and I suspect my vice presidential opponent,” Biden said.
“She’s good-looking,” he quipped.
Yeah, really, hold your sides on that one.
Let's turn that reference around 180-degrees and imagine a female candidate in front of a large audience talking about some, oh, hypothetical male opponent for the vice presidency. "Thirty-six years in the United States Senate," she says, "And all he's got to show for it is a beautiful head of hairplugs."
ST. PAUL -- Hurricane Gustav reached to the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center today, where Louisiana’s delegation to the Republican National Convention here crowded into a Crowne Plaza Hotel lobby.
Having just arrived, some were staying. Others were planning to return home. All were checking in back home on their friends and relatives.
Before coming to Minnesota, Lloyd and Jill Harsch had cleared out their kitchen pantry and refrigerator, boarded up their home, and carried boxes of photographs to the second story of their home in Gentilly Parish of New Orleans.
“I’d love to be home," said Lloyd. "But if I were going back to New Orleans, I’d be arrested.” The 47-year-old alternate delegate added, “I figured that right now, I’m at the best place I can be.”
Others cheered at news that the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign had chartered a DC-9 plane to fly members of the Gulf Coast delegations to Jackson, Miss.
Vickie and Rhett Davis, delegates from Walker, La., had left their four children with Vickie’s 83-year-old mother, who is healing from a broken foot. When they learned about the plane, they called Vickie’s mother who, with the help of friends and relatives, bundled the children into a car and raced to meet the plane in Jackson.
“I don’t want them down there, by themselves, sitting in a house for day after day with no power or maybe no water,” said Vickie, a 48-year-old stay-at-home mom who runs her own accounting firm.
“My daughter’s birthday is next week, and the best gift I can think to give is to bring her back here with us –- and make sure the whole family’s safe.”
-- P.J. Huffstutter
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ST. PAUL -- Karen Bonadio is a rare species -- a Republican from Los Angeles.
And as she and her father, Col. Robert A. Bonadio, USMC retired, traveled here for the scheduled Monday opening of the Republican National Convention, both delegates were excited -- and both a little worried.
They were excited by the prospect of naming Sen. John McCain as the Republican presidential nominee, so excited that they donned McCain buttons even before they boarded their flight at LAX so anyone in the airport would know their candidate in case they cared, which they surely must, though no one said anything.
"He's a great man," they agreed. Karen Bonadio, in fact, changed her voter registration from Decline to State to Republican so she could vote for McCain in the primary.
The pair actually met the senator recently and have a tarmac group photo to show anyone who doesn't ask to see it. McCain, it seems, was so effectively responsive to Mr. Bonadio's years-long effort with....
Amid the torrent of coverage of the heretofore obscure Sarah Palin, there comes today a classic clash -- via dueling columns -- from two noted commentators on whether John McCain hit a home run by tapping her to be his running mate or struck out.
From the right, making the case for the round-tripper (with a caveat), is the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol. Says he in an editorial for his magazine:
Millions of Americans -- mostly but not only women, mostly but not only Republicans and conservatives -- seemed to get a sense of energy and enjoyment and pride, not just from her nomination, but especially from her smashing opening performance.
Palin will be a compelling and mold-breaking example for lots of Americans who are told every day that to be even a bit conservative or Christian or old-fashioned is bad form. In this respect, Palin can become an inspirational figure and powerful symbol.
Kristol's one caution is summarized by the piece's headline -- he opines that the McCain camp must "Let Palin Be Palin" if it's to fully benefit from her.
From the left comes the alternative take by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, and the headline and subhead for his piece make his view clear: "McCain's 'Hail Sarah' Pass ... His choice for veep is all but set up for failure in the fall."
Alter writes that for all the initial excitement Palin's selection sparked within the GOP, "there's a reason that rookies" usually flail about on the main stage of U.S. politics. In predicting that fate for the former mayor of a small Alaskan community (referenced in this passage), he writes:
It's not her lack of name recognition; America loves a fresh face, especially one that's a cross between a Fox anchor and a character on "Northern Exposure," the old TV show about an Alaska town about the size of Wasilla.
The problem is that politics, like all professions, isn't as easy as it looks. Palin's odds of emerging unscathed this fall are slim.
On election day, one of these pundits will be able to pat himself on the back; the other will hope folks forgot what he wrote.
Now that we know all of the major political players in this year's presidential election, let's get down to the important stuff.
What do they drive? And, given that high gas prices are on the minds of voters, what kind of mileage are they getting?
Both John McCain and Barack Obama have promised to fix the country's energy crisis, but what they have parked in the garage may be more revealing than political rhetoric.
Ken Bensinger, over at the LATimes.com car blog Up to Speed, did some digging today and has this to report:
McCain: Cadillac CTS sedan (19 mpg). His first car was reportedly a 1958 Corvette.
Obama: Drove a Chrysler 300 with a V-8 engine (18 mpg) until last summer, when he switched to a Ford Escape hybrid (30 mpg) after getting bad press about driving a gas guzzler.
Joe Biden: He sometimes drives a 1967 Corvette (no mpg rating).
Sarah Palin: As Alaska's governor, she drives a state-owned Chevy Suburban SUV (16 mpg). In July, it sustained several thousand dollars in damage when she was involved in a multi-vehicle accident while going to work. She also has been known to drive her husband's snowmobiles.
It's a long ways from the deck of one of Sen. John McCain's uncountable houses in Sedona, Ariz., to the modest city of Wasilla, Alaska, that Gov.Sarah Palin calls home with her fisherman husband Todd and their five children to the Buckeye Corner sporting goods store in West Columbus, Ohio.
And to the home pages and front pages of a nation seemingly fascinated by the sudden explosion onto the political stage of a fresh, bespectacled face among a crowd of too-familiar folks who've been yada-yada-ing about the same old stuff for nearly 20 months now.
Now, just in time for Labor Day, a new drama series to follow.
But in a matter of hours the dramatic selection of the 44-year-old reform Republican woman with the sharp elbows under the basketball hoops as McCain's running mate suddenly changed the subject away from last night's immense Democratic evangelical gathering at Denver's Invesco Field.
And it instantly energized much of the GOP's conservative base that has been yawning its way through the summer with the aging Arizona heir to its party nomination.
Charlie Black, a senior McCain advisor, told The Times' Maeve Reston that he was just in a room with 300 conservatives where James Dobson, the Focus on the Family founder who reaches millions of evangelicals daily with his radio broadcasts and was once threatening....
DENVER -- Prameela Bartholomeusz is no fan of the Democratic Party’s caucus system, a method used in certain states to select the party’s presidential nominee.
A member of the Platform Committee, Bartholomeusz hoped to get strong language in the party’s new platform opposing caucuses. But at a private meeting the night before the committee met in Pittsburgh, she got word that her issue would be shot down.
Bartholomeusz, who lives in Palo Alto, said she attended a meeting with party Chairman Howard Dean and Barack Obama campaign representatives, where various amendments were hashed out outside public view.
Bartholomeusz supported one that called for doing away with the caucus system in favor of....
In a surprising attempt to stifle broadcast criticism of its candidate, the presidential campaign of freshman Illinois senator Barack Obama is organizing supporters to confront Chicago's WGN radio station for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its main evening discussion program.
"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail sent to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. (Wednesday night) pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."
Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that examined Obama's ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical who helped found a protest group that advocated violence.
The magazine was blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school reform project that Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded.
As The Ticket reported here, the school later reserved its position and opened the records Tuesday. Media organizations are poring over scores of boxes of documents to study the Obama-Ayres relationship, which the senator has described as merely casual.
Obama's campaign is urging supporters to call the radio station to complain. "Tell WGN that....
The family of Joe Biden, who will be officially nominated as the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party's 'reform Washington' ticket with Barack Obama Thursday night, appears to be enmeshed in the same D.C. money game that Obama denounces.
One of the senator's sons -- Hunter, a Washington lobbyist -- and the senator's brother, James --received a $1 million investment in their purchase of a hedge fund company from the senator's largest political donor, an Illinois law firm, SimmonsCooper. The brother and the son subsequently repaid the $1 million to the law firm, which specializes in representing asbestos victims.
At about the same time, the firm also steered dozens of asbestos litigation cases to a Delaware law firm where the senator's other son, Beau, worked before moving on to become elected attorney general of the state of Delaware. Beau Biden is credited with acquiring the Illinois client for his firm whose long time managing partner describes himself as a Biden family friend.
The Democrats' about-to-be vice presidential candidate, who has been a senator in Washington since 1972 when Obama was 11 years old, claims he did not know about any of the sons' or brother's business dealings with the law firm, whose representatives had lobbied his office in the past.
With Biden about to take the podium at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, read The Times' full investigative account by Tom Hamburger and Chuck Neubauer just posted here on this website.
Barack Obama’s youthful image may have helped propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination, but as he prepares to formally become his party’s standard bearer in the November election, Obama’s closely shorn hair appears to be increasingly gray.
A little salt in the pepper might come in handy for a candidate who faces questions about whether he has enough experience from Republican rival John McCain, who turns 72 on Friday.
On the campaign trail in recent weeks, Obama tells supporters the new hue is from the rigors of spending long months on the road stumping for votes.
“I’ve been running for president for 19 months, which explains the gray hair,” the 47-year-old says. Zariff, a Chicago barber who goes by one name and who has cut Obama’s hair for about 15 years, said he first noticed the gray about three years ago.
“It has showed up a little bit more, especially in the past year,” said Zariff, who has worked at the Hyde Park Hair Salon and Barber Shop for nearly two decades.
But he demurred when asked if campaign stress might be the cause.
“Well, if he’s under any stress, I don’t notice it. He’s pretty smooth when it comes to that,” Zariff said.
Obama’s haircuts are unlikely to become a political liability.
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who tried to cultivate a populist image before he dropped out of the presidential race, paid $400 for a haircut; Zariff charges $21.
Zariff said he cuts Obama’s hair once a week.
“Mostly, he comes right here to the shop, where he’s been coming for a long time,” he said. “If he’s on the road for too long, I make sure I get out there” to where he is.
Zariff said Obama is a generous tipper, but declined to name the amount. “That’s personal,” he said, adding, “I’ve never complained.”
-- Seema Mehta
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But here's a postscript on that cozy little video family interlude Monday night with Barack Obama, on the giant screen in Denver's Pepsi Center. The presumed Democratic nominee got a little mixed up about where he was. He said he was in St. Louis, when actually he was in Kansas City.
But the freshman Illinois senator has otherwise built quite a reputation as a real good talker on the stump -- smooth, cadenced, turning his eyes smoothly from teleprompter to teleprompter without the gawky jerkiness of George W. Bush.
Monday was also the first real opportunity for millions of Americans to see Obama's wife, Michelle, talking at length, except for that unfortunate winter sound bite about not being proud of America until now.
Her assignment was to help humanize her family and man, who seems cool and aloof to some. She told stories and tried to draw the positive biographical portrait that has become so crucial in the minds of American voters as they decide their voting preference for November, especially when the story of Obama's Republican opponent is much better known.
But down in Florida, Michelle Obama's speech apparently drove one as-yet-unidentified viewer a little crazy. Police in Pasco near Tampa Bay said a man exited his RV and began yelling and shooting his rifle into the air, apparently not celebrating. When police arrived and later the SWAT team, the man ducked back inside and held them at bay for six hours, despite tear gas canisters.
According to Sheriff spokesman Kevin Doll, when the man finally surrendered at dawn, he said the cause of his unhappiness was Michelle Obama's speech. He was taken for psychological evaluation. Which makes sense since we thought it was a pretty good speech.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Photo credit: Milbert O. Brown / Chicago Tribune
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Alan Kessler, a major Hillary Rodham Clinton fundraiser, watched the speech from the Pennsylvania section on the convention floor in Denver's Pepsi Center.
Kessler said he got emotional during the address. Taking out his BlackBerry, he showed an e-mail he got from a friend as Clinton spoke: “I still want her," said the message.
Pointing to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, standing a few feet away, Kessler said, "I saw the governor wiping his eyes."
For his part, Rendell, credited with helping Clinton win the Pennsylvania Democratic primary soundly, said, "She blew the lights out." In an interview on the convention floor, Rendell said Clinton's mission, in part, was to "send a message to her recalcitrant supporters that there's no time to look back. We have to keep going and get this done."
Kessler added: “People all around me were saying it was hard to believe a year ago she wouldn't have been up there giving her acceptance speech. That's why tonight was great. It's a great opportunity to show the emotions and then get down to business and do our work."
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who competed in the Democratic primary before rejecting longtime Clinton ties and throwing his support to Barack Obama at a crucial time in March, described the speech as "a home run."
"It sends a huge signal that the Democratic Party should be unified," Richardson said. "No more divisions. Obama and Clinton are together."
We'll see about that over time.
-- Peter Nicholas
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Ah, Democrats. There's something about the circular firing squad that just seems to hold endless fascination for them. Why do they even need a Republican opposition when they can just battle themselves?
At this convention, the well-reported rift is between the Obamaphiles and the Clintonphiles and it's the continuing narrative. Tonight, Sen. Hillary Clinton herself will speak.
From the bad feelings that sprung up during the nasty primary season, to the ire in the Clinton camp over how they believe she was allegedly mistreated in Sen. Barack Obama's vice presidential selection process, to the dissension from her supporters over the role she and they would be given at the convention, to the resentment in the Obama camp over the Clintons' inability to act like it's Obama's party now, there's been bad blood at every turn.
Former President Bill Clinton reportedly is miffed that he's been given the assignment Wednesday night of selling Americans on Obama as a better commander-in-chief than Sen. John McCain, the all-but-official Republican presidential nominee.
Evidently, the former president would've preferred to talk about domestic policy and the economy in order to trash-talk the Republicans who he sees as destroying the prosperity and trend towards growing economic equality that characterized his presidency nearly a decade ago.
Also, since Obama doesn't have much of a national-security or foreign policy track record, to speak of, what is Clinton supposed to speak of? That's a fairly challenging assignment, even for a renowned campaigner as ex-president Clinton.
Speaking of being miffed, you don't have to be about missing political news by joining the growing throngs preparing for the rest of this political season and beyond by having every Ticket item -- plus special offline Tweets from The Ticket's writers starting with the party conventions -- sent directly to your cellphone.
Before we get to the predictable jokes about Sen.John McCain'sage (his Social Security number is 8) from tonight's chat with Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show," there were a couple of political points raised.
Jay asked the presumptive Republican nominee about the nastiness that suddenly emerged when Barack Obama named Sen. Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate.
"My, how he's changed," said McCain to audience laughter. "I guess it's part of politics. I've always been good friends with Joe. He has a lovely wife, Jill. And Cindy and I and Joe and Jill have been friends. And I guess we'll -- it's only 72 days, I think. Who's counting?"
LENO: "Wasn't he the one that suggested you run as vice president with John Kerry?"
McCAIN: "Yes. And said that I could run on either party and be great for America. I will keep reminding him of that."
McCain said Biden's choice would not affect his choice and suggested one problem for ...
A lot of California's Democrats who thought it was their time with an overwhelming candidate like Sen. Hillary Clinton this year are in Denver now, and they're still disappointed.
But, hey, at least they were going to hear their favorite former first lady speak to them this morning.
Alas, their candidate didn't bother to show up for some unexplained reason. They felt kind of snubbed. Bad enough. But then they got another less sympathetic speaker, a Californian, in fact.
The delegation was treated to a speech by another prominent female Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Important person and all. But admittedly not The Favored One they had in mind. Pelosi told the Californians how enthusiastically she personally was supporting the actual one chosen, the party's real nominee, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
And then, in the interests of promoting the party's fragile political unity at the moment, she told the California Clinton supporters to “get over it.”
Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice K. Hahn said she realizes that Obama will work hard for the causes she believes in and she is ready to work for the freshman senator's election to the White House.
But, she added, getting over Clinton's loss would not be easy.
“It’s a heartbreaker for a lot of us,” she said. “We thought it was our time.”
(UPDATE: This just in: Some kindly Republicans have just announced they are throwing a "Happy Hour for Hillary" tonight in Denver at the Paramount Cafe at 519 16th Street from 8:30 until 10:30 p.m. All Clinton supporters are welcome.)
--John Mitchell
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At a fundraiser in Sacramento today, John McCain happened to leak word that his wife, Cindy McCain, is on her way to Georgia.
Finally, she could get in.
The candidate's wife, who's a frequent foreign traveler for her own charitable and humanitarian causes, has been trying to organize a trip into the country since Russia invaded South Ossetia and elsewhere two weeks ago, according to her spokeswoman Melissa Shuffield.
Shuffield said that McCain, who is traveling with the U.N.'s World Food Program, plans to visit with wounded Georgian soldiers and meet with Georgian President MikhailSaakashvili. John "We are all Georgians" McCain has known the president since the Georgian was a student and has visited that country several times. McCain says they've talked by phone often in recent days.
This is not the first time Cindy McCain has broken off from the campaign trail with her husband to travel the world. This year alone she's been to Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Rwanda and Kosovo with her work on various charities.
But still, it's probably no coincidence that McCain's Georgia visit comes on the heels of newly-anointed Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden's trip there.
The campaign says the timing of the trip had nothing to do with the Democratic National Convention, where Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, will speak today.
McCain plans to return to the U.S. late Wednesday, according to Shuffield. TIME.com has more about the trip here.
In other Georgia news, the White House has announced that Vice President Dick Cheney plans to travel to that troubled country next week.
-- Kate Linthicum
Photo credit: Associated Press
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You know those muscular guys in the dark suits and crew cuts who are always around the presidential and vice presidential candidates but never looking at them? The ones in dark sunglasses who have a squiggly flesh-colored wire running from their ear down under their short collar?
Those are the obvious Secret Service guards protecting our country's would-be and really-are leaders. There are always others around, of course. You might notice they never have anything in their hands.
Former first lady Hillary Clinton aside, Barack Obama was the first major candidate to get such protection last year. And Sen. John McCain was the last to accept, reluctantly. Such protection does create a distance between candidate and crowds (in the interests of safety) and an unreal bubble around the entire traveling circus.
It's really good for parking though and for zipping through red lights and stop signs, since these heavily-armed folks do pretty much whatever they want.
Anyway, since it potentially involves life and death and agents using their own bodies as human shields against bullets and bombs, the Secret Service protection is rarely a joking matter.
But at a Wisconsin barbecue today, the freshman Illinois senator jokingly offered to do a supporter a favor by getting the Secret Service to vet the young man who plans to marry the supporter's daughter.
“People ask me, 'why did you decide to run for president?'” Obama told a few hundred supporters gathered on a park lawn in Eau Claire. “I’ve decided that the real reason is Secret Service protection for my two girls as they enter into their teenage years.”
The shorts-and-t-shirt crowd burst into laughter as Obama gestured toward a cluster of men in dark suits.
“So whenever a young man comes by…for a date, we’re going to have one of these guys –- see these mean-looking guys with the glasses who don’t crack a smile?”
Obama chuckled with the crowd as the stone-faced agents, who are meticulously trained to avoid diversions even from their own assignments, gazed straight ahead without a twitch.
“They’re armed,” said Obama, whose daughters are 7 and 10 years old. “They’re dangerous.”
-- Michael Finnegan
Photo credit: A secret too
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Well, it didn't take long for the campaign of Sen. John McCain to bring his good friend Hillary Clinton into the confrontational mix.
Both senators are on the Armed Services Committee and, as The Ticket wrote back in June, McCain was among the first to befriend Clinton when she arrived in that nearly all-male body in 2001.
Neither attacked the other during the harsh winter primary season.
And, in fact, as The Ticket noted back in June when Clinton dropped out of the Democratic race, McCain's website posted an immediate tribute to her tenacity and commitment, familiarly titled "Hillary Out."
It took Sen. Barack Obama's website two days to post the same kind of acknowledgement.
Moments ago, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Republican's campaign released a new commercial. Like the one put out 21 hours ago featuring Joe Biden, the Democrats' new vice presidential pick, this one also uses the words of Democrats to attack members of their own party.
In that first GOP ad after Biden was picked (see two videos below), he was shown talking about his new running mate's inexperience, a claim the Democrats now attribute to merely primary politics, and about his regard for McCain.
This new Sunday ad is titled "Passed Over." Aimed clearly at the 18 million disappointed Democrats who voted for her during the long primary season, the ad asks why Clinton was passed over for the No. 2 spot.
It shows Clinton and says:
"She won millions of votes.
"But isn't on his ticket.
"Why?
"For speaking the truth.
"On his plans:
HILLARY CLINTON: "You never hear the specifics."
ANNCR: "On the Rezko scandal:
HILLARY CLINTON: "We still don't have a lot of answers about Sen. Obama."
ANNCR: "On his attacks:
HILLARY CLINTON: "Sen. Obama's campaign has become increasingly negative."
ANNCR: "The truth hurt.
"And Obama didn't like it.
JOHN MCCAIN: "I'm John McCain and I approved this message."
(UPDATE: The following day a spokeswoman for Clinton said:
"Hillary Clinton's support of Barack Obama is clear. She has said repeatedly that Barack Obama and she share a commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting us out of Iraq, and expanding access to health care. John McCain doesn't. It's interesting how those remarks didn't make it into his ad.")
To view brief videos of both new political commercials, click on the "Read more" line below.
--Andrew Malcolm
Photo credit: The McCain Report
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A couple of days ago The Ticket wrote about how the University of Illinois in Chicago had sealed dozens of boxes of documents relating to the joint work that Barack Obama did on a civic project there with William Ayers, the former 1960s radical from the Weathermen.
Just like that, the university has now reversed itself. Shows what The Ticket can do when it exercises its clout -- a Chicago kind of word.
Actually, we had nothing to do with it. On Friday the school said it will release records of Obama's service to a nonprofit organization linked to Ayers, now a Chicago education professor.
Sen. John McCain's allies have been trying to exploit the ties between Obama and Ayers, with a McCain fundraiser donating nearly $2.9 million for an independent TV ad focusing on Ayers, whose Weathermen group took credit for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.
The records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and which Ayers co-founded, will be made available to the public on Tuesday, the university said in a statement.
National Review magazine had attempted to obtain the records and was told the donor had not cleared their opening. Today, the university said it now has legal authority to allow public access to the material.
Our prolific blogging colleague Mark Silva, who seems to be in both Washington and Denver at the same time while writing about Chicago events, has the full story over here at the Swamp.
*Except, of course, for the conspiracy theorists out there.
One of the subtexts to the presidential campaign so far has been speculation by haters of both Barack Obama and John McCain that neither is eligible to be president because neither was born in the U.S.
In the case of McCain, he was born to U.S. citizens in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone while his military father was stationed there. McCain's Senate colleagues pooh-poohed the idea that disqualified him, and lawyers are wrestling over it, but we doubt that a challenge on those grounds will get far.
In Obama's case, there has been rampant online speculation that his birth certificate is forged or altered somehow. Well, the folks at FactCheck.org say they have seen the certificate, touched and vouched it -- Obama is as American as baseball, apple pie and, these days, burritos, pasta and kung pao chicken.
So that should settle it ... unless ... wait ... the people at FactCheck.org use computers, with keypads, that have the letters r-e-z-k-o on them, which just happened to spell the name of one of Obama's disgraced former backers ... and they were in Chicago to see the birth certificate at ... Obama headquarters ... CONNECT THE DOTS, PEOPLE!
Barack Obama offered up a little insight to Harry Smith this morning on CBS' "Early Show," saying he wants his running mate to be "a partner" ready to govern and "who is going to be able to challenge my thinking and not simply be a yes person when it comes to policy-making." (The transcript is after the jump).
Mark that down, and as soon as you get the e-mail alert with the right name, match it up and make your own call -- independent thinker, or acolyte?
What struck us as a little more enlightening -- would you expect Obama to say he wanted Eddie Haskell for vice president? -- were Obama's comments about the negative turn the campaign has taken. The Democrats have been trying to inject Karl Rove, much hated among the base, into the race, and John McCain's hiring of some of Rove's proteges certainly helped that cause.
Obama brought Rove directly into play with Smith:
John McCain likes to characterize himself as a maverick, but the truth
is what he's done, particularly over the last month when he shook up
his campaign, is he basically hired Karl Rove's old crew and adopted
Karl Rove's old tactics, which really had to do with suggesting that I
was unpatriotic, suggesting that I would rather win -- that I'd rather
lose a war so that I could win an election, just because we have a
fundamental disagreement about Iraq. You know, those kinds of attacks
are pretty par for the course. So it doesn't anger me, it's what we
expected.
Of course, that doesn't address the negative turn in Obama's own campaign, particularly in some of the ads.
To paraphrase The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again.": The new politics, same as the old politics..."
Robin Leach isn’t your usual political pundit. But the former champagne-toasting host of the TV hit of the mid-'80s to mid-'90s, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," may be more qualified than most to opine on John McCain's now-infamous inability to remember how many homes he owns.
In an early morning phone call Friday from his fabulous crib in Las Vegas, Leach told The Times that he isn’t really surprised at McCain's odd memory lapse given the complex lives that the super-rich lead.
"He probably was confused as to which homes are in his name, his wife's name, or corporate names," Leach explained in his familiar, deep British baritone. "In his attempt to be honest, he put his foot in his mouth."
Indeed, McCain’s four homes and at least four other residential properties are held in the name of his wife, Cindy, and her dependent children through a series of partnerships and trusts. Their combined value is nearly $14 million.
Leach said McCain "tends to answer questions very rapidly without thinking of the correct answers. ... I would call it honest confusion."
The British-born Leach isn't a U.S. citizen and thus can't vote. But for a man famous for focusing on froth, he took a serious view of America's latest political fracas.
"This has nothing to do with the issues candidates should be discussing," he said. "Let’s talk about real things, not silly things. It’s irrelevant whether the future president has one home or ten."
"It’s nothing to get into a kerfuffle about," he added. "It’s silly and ridiculous."
As host of "Lifestyles," Leach served as an always-enthusiastic tour guide to the extravagant homes of wealthy entertainers, athletes and business moguls. He ended each segment with his signature sign-off: "Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!"
Now 66, Leach writes books and a blog, travels widely, and owns an HDTV studio in Las Vegas.
Wow, here's a political stunner for a Friday morning.
It seems there's a new political survey out.
It seems there's one of them every few minutes in these presidential election years. Who would you rather hear at the Kiwanis Club? Who would you like to attend your PTA meeting? Whom would you prefer to braise ribs for?
Anyway, this new survey shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the former naval attack pilot who actually landed jet planes on a moving aircraft carrier after getting shot at, the guy who lives in the West and hikes the Grand Canyon with his two sons in the military, the one who has three dogs among assorted pets and likes to wear flannel shirts around the house with his wife, the blond who drives race cars, is considerably more popular among the nation's 40 million hunters and fisherpersons than the other presidential candidate who went to Harvard Law School, married another lawyer, pals around with Oprah in Chicago knowing about arugula and has promised to get his children a dogafter the election.
