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Keynote Speaker Urges U.S. To Look To Future

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The Associated Press

Published: August 27, 2008

DENVER - Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, keynoting the Democratic National Convention, said Tuesday night that American voters "have one shot to get it right" by electing Barack Obama president to end Republican leadership that is stuck in the past.

Warner rebuked President Bush and GOP nominee-to-be John McCain, but his address was hardly a summons to political arms against them. He mentioned McCain's name only twice, and he said he'd learned in the cell phone business that made him millions that a strategy of tearing down the competition doesn't suffice.

"I know we're at the Democratic convention, but if an idea works, it really doesn't matter if it has an R or a D next to it," Warner said. "Because this election isn't about liberal versus conservative. It's not about left versus right. It's about the future versus the past."

And "in George Bush and John McCain's America, far too many" people don't know whether that future will hold what they need, said Warner, who argued that Obama will change that.

In his sharpest words for the Republican nominee, Warner said, "John McCain promises more of the same."

"A plan that would explode the deficit that will be passed on to our kids. No real plan to invest in our infrastructure. And his plan would continue spending $10 billion a month in Iraq," Warner said.

"I don't know about you, but that's not just right," he added. "That's four more years that we can't just afford."

Obama will change all that, contended Warner, the odds-on favorite this fall to win Virginia's U.S. Senate seat. He holds a hefty lead in the polls against Republican Jim Gilmore, another former governor. The seat now is held by retiring Republican Sen. John Warner, who is no relation.

"Right now, at this critical moment in our history, we have one shot to get it right," Warner said. "And the status quo just won't cut it."

In energy, health care, education and America's world standing, there are opportunities with change and risks without them, Warner said. He said Obama is the candidate who "knows we don't have another four years to waste."

"And Barack Obama knows this too," he said. "We need leaders who see our common ground as sacred ground. We need leaders who will appeal to us not as Republicans or Democrats but first and foremost as Americans."

Warner's featured role fit the Obama campaign plan to challenge the Republicans in what has been reliable presidential territory for them. Virginia has voted Republican in every presidential election since Lyndon Johnson carried the state in 1964. This time, the Obama campaign sees an opening to wrest away 13 electoral votes.

"The race for the future is on, and it won't be won if only some Americans are in the running," Warner said. "It won't be won with yesterday's ideas and yesterday's divisions.

"And it won't be won with a president who is stuck in the past," he said. "We need a president who understands the world today, the future we seek, and the change we need. We need Barack Obama."

Obama campaigned in Missouri as he slowly made his way toward the convention city. Speaking to airline workers in a giant hangar, he accused the Bush administration of failing to enforce health and safety laws and said McCain "doesn't get it" when it comes to the concerns of blue collar workers.

There was more of the same as a parade of speakers criticized McCain at the convention.

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the Republican has voted against "real sex education, voted against affordable family planning. And if elected, John McCain has vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade," she said, referring to the landmark 1973 case that affirmed women's right to abortion.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland focused on economic issues. "While families are losing sleep tonight trying to figure out some way to make their paycheck stretch through one more day, John McCain is sleeping better than ever," he said, recalling that McCain had recently said Americans were better off because of President Bush's policies.

And Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said oil companies were "placing their bets on John McCain, bankrolling his campaign and gambling with our future."

"John McCain offers four more years of the same Bush-Cheney policies that have failed us," summed up Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Tuesday's rhetorical attacks seemed likely to put a stop to unusual convention week sniping from two well-known aides to former President Clinton who said the earlier speeches were too timid.

Paul Begala had spoken dismissively of Warner's plans to go easy on McCain. "This isn't the Richmond Chamber of Commerce," he said.

"If this party has a message, it's done a hell of a job hiding it," James Carville told CNN as he reviewed the opening night's program.

If Obama's advisers had any reaction to the sniping, they kept it to themselves. The Illinois senator has cast himself as a different kind of politician, a "post-partisan" whose stock in trade is to forge a change in the way campaigns are conducted.

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