Analysis: McCain speech follows hard acts

ByABC News
September 4, 2008, 11:54 PM

ST. PAUL -- When his campaign imploded last summer and nearly everyone counted him out, John McCain headed back to New Hampshire and held dozens of the town hall meetings he favors, arguing his case and, ultimately, winning that crucial first primary.

No surprise, then, that the Arizona senator had the stage at the Xcel Energy Center reconfigured to suggest that familiar setting, a long arm edged in lights that stretched into the center of the arena floor so he could be surrounded by people as he accepted the hard-won nomination Thursday night.

The speech launches another difficult fight.

Formally accepting the presidential bid he lost eight years ago, McCain now faces a confident and well-funded Democratic opposition and an anxious American public. The speech Wednesday by his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, energized Republicans in the convention hall with us-versus-them appeals to middle America and jabs at Democrat Barack Obama as a naif and a pretender.

What McCain needed to do in his speech was more difficult: Convince independent-minded voters watching on television that he is a maverick, tied not to the unpopular President Bush but to his own legacy as someone who is willing to shake things up.

McCain offered a brief word of praise for Bush for his leadership after the 9/11 attacks, but he made it clear he wanted to break with the GOP's current course.

"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," mentioning corruption and the failure to move toward energy independence.

"We're going to change that," he went on. "The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics."

The speech was interrupted by an antiwar protester in one of the upper tiers of the arena. Convention delegates immediately drowned out her shouts with chants of "U-S-A" as she was carried out of the arena.

McCain didn't seem phased.

"Americans want us to stop yelling at each other," he said.