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OBAMA BUILDS UPON 'AMERICAN PROMISE'

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By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY

The New York Times

Published: August 29, 2008

DENVER - Sen. Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party presidential nomination on Thursday, declaring that the "American promise has been threatened" by eight years under President Bush.

He said Sen. John McCain represents a continuation of policies that undermined the nation's economy and imperiled its standing around the world.

The speech by Obama, in front of an audience of about 80,000 people on a warm night in a football stadium refashioned into a vast political stage, left little doubt how he intended to press his campaign against McCain this fall.

He linked McCain to what he described as the "failed presidency of George W. Bush" in cutting language that seemed intended to reassure nervous Democrats that he had the spine to take on a man who has proven to be a scrappy Republican opponent.

"The record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time," Obama said. "Sen. McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than 90 percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change."

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

A Historic Night

The speech was an opportunity for Obama to present himself to Americans just now beginning to tune in on this campaign, to make the case against McCain and to offer an idea of what he stands for, beyond a promise of change.

And it came on a night that offered a reminder of the historic nature of the Obama candidacy: 45 years to the day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the Mall in Washington.

Obama is the first black to be nominated for the White House by a major party.

Even in invoking the anniversary of the King speech, Obama only alluded to race. "The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things," he said. "They could've heard words of anger and discord. They could've been told to succumb to the fear and frustration of so many dreams deferred.

"But what the people heard instead - people of every creed and color, from every walk of life - is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked. That together, our dreams can be one."

McCain marked the occasion by releasing a television advertisement in which he paid salute to Obama.

"How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day," McCain said. "Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight, Senator, job well done."

The advertisement stood in stark contrast to a summer of slashing attacks on Obama by McCain that apparently contributed to the tightening of this race.

With his speech, Obama scored McCain for raising questions about his patriotism, trying to turn a big election into a fight over small squabbles, and trying to diminish him by presenting him as a celebrity.

He offered a list of people who had inspired him in his life - from his grandmother to unemployed factory workers he had met on the campaign - in rebutting the attack on him as a celebrity, which Obama aides say has been particularly damaging politically.

"I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine," he said. "These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me. And it is on their behalf that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States."

"What is that promise?" he continued. "It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect."

Obama used much of his speech to link McCain and Bush - a line of attack that his aides view as their strongest going into the fall - and signaled that he saw next week's Republican convention as a way to press that line of attack.

'Eight Is Enough'

"Next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third," he said. "And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight. On Nov. 4, we must stand up and say: 'eight is enough.'"

Speaking in generally broad terms, Obama offered a contrast between Republican and Democratic views of the role of government.

"We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500," he said, "but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job - an economy that honors the dignity of work.

"I will cut taxes for 95 percent of all working families. ... In an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class."

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