Obama launched strongest attack on McCain

Barack Obama launched his strongest attack yet on his Republican rival John McCain as he accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, US political pundits said today.

Mr Obama, who is the first African American US presidential nominee of a major party, told more than 80,000 people packed in an outdoor stadium that the American Dream was alive and the nation can be better than it has been during the last eight years of President George Bush.

The most important speech of his career was “less lofty” and “more sharply worded” than usual, political pundits said.

“If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have,” Mr Obama declared, referring to his rival’s notorious temper and criticism of his own lack of experience.

The New York Times highlighted that Mr Obama “went so far as to attack the presumed strength of Mr McCain’s campaign, national security.”

The Washington Post said his keynote address “was less lofty than his earlier rhetorical forays, more specific on the policies he would pursue as president and more scathing towards McCain”.

And the Los Angeles Times described it as “more sharply worded than his usual lyrical prose”.

The Democratic nominee “presented some long-standing and fairly conventional Democratic economic proposals,” the Wall Street Journal said.

But the style and presentation which has led to Mr Obama being compared with rock stars and cult-like superheroes was not far away.

The Wall Street Journal said that, when Mr Obama walked on stage, the “cheering went on for several minutes; the stadium erupted with hundreds of camera flashes and shuddered from the concussion of thousands of stamping feet”.

USA Today said the four-day convention in Denver, Colorado, ended “with a display of fireworks and pageantry worthy of an Olympic opening”.

But the McCain campaign was unimpressed, with spokesman Tucker Bounds denouncing it as a “misleading speech that was so fundamentally at odds with the meagre record of Barack Obama”.

In his televised address, Mr Obama left no doubt that America was ready for change and said it was time for voters to stand up and say: “Eight is enough!”

“I get it,” he said. “I realise that I am not the likeliest candidates for this office. I don’t fit the typical pedigree, and I haven’t spent my career in the halls of Washington.

“But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s about you.”

Mr Obama confronted every criticism made by Mr McCain and the Republicans of his campaign and the Democrats head-on, from his ego and rock star status to his lack of foreign policy experience and his tax policies.

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

Mr Obama, who made history on Wednesday as the first African American US presidential nominee of a major party, said: “This moment – this election – is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive.”

The 47-year-old Illinois senator said Mr McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, had “voted with George Bush 90% of the time”.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a 10% chance on change,” he said.

Mr Obama, whose keynote address at the party’s 2004 convention shot him to fame, gave his 44-minute acceptance speech last night 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr inspired the world with his “I Have a Dream” speech.

“America, we cannot turn back,” he said.

At the end of a convention dominated by the issue of unity between Mr Obama and his former rival Hillary Clinton, the Democrat received the loudest applause when he embraced the idea of coming together.

“The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag,” he said.

“They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.”

He added that he had “made clear we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights” and added: “John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell – but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.”

Mr Obama went on: “As commander-in-chief I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm’s way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.”

Mr Obama laid out how he would finance his plans and added that America’s failure to respond to its challenges were “a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W Bush”.

It was time for Republicans to “own their failure”, he said.

“It’s time for us to change America. And that’s why I’m running for President of the United States.”