NYT:McCain Says He’s a Leader for Troubled Times By ELISABETH BUMILLER October 14, 2008 WILMINGTON, N.C. — Senator John McCain jettisoned much of his campaign’s angry tone on Monday as he declared that his race for the presidency was not yet over and that he had the experience and fighting spirit to lead the nation from crisis.
In a departure from the sharp personal attacks against Senator Barack Obama in recent weeks, Mr. McCain adopted the more positive message of the old “happy warrior,” his image during the primaries. Although he painted a pessimistic picture of the American economy — indeed, of the entire American way of life — he said the calamitous situation could be made right by the forceful leadership he was prepared to provide. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/14/us/politics/14mccain.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
“I’ve been fighting for this country since I was 17 years old, and I have the scars to prove it,” Mr. McCain told a rally of more than 10,000 people in Virginia Beach and then again here, at a smaller gathering at Cape Fear Community College. “If you elect me president, I will fight to take America in a new direction from my first day in office until my last.”
In recent days Mr. McCain has faced withering criticism from Republicans for running what they call an intensely negative and incoherent campaign that offers no rationale for his candidacy and may well damage the party for years to come. The speech appeared to be intended as an antidote, and aides suggested that Mr. McCain would stick with this new message through the final three weeks of the campaign. He is also likely to adopt the tone in the critical final debate with Mr. Obama on Wednesday night.
Still, aides held out the possibility that Mr. McCain would change tactics yet again if warranted by events. Even on Monday, in an interview with CNN, Mr. McCain continued to criticize Mr. Obama for his association with the 1960s radical William Ayers, whom he called “an unrepentant terrorist.” Mr. McCain said Mr. Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dorhn, both founders of the Weather Underground, “want to still destroy America.”
The speech, written by Mark Salter, the co-author of Mr. McCain’s books and the candidate’s adviser of two decades, had dark, Salteresque metaphors — “I know what fear feels like, it’s a thief in the night who robs your strength” — and noted that the campaign was six points behind. Mr. McCain said that “the national media has written us off” and that “Mr. Obama is measuring the drapes.”
In one particularly bleak passage, Mr. McCain said: “Financial markets are collapsing. Credit is drying up. Your savings are in danger, and your retirement is at risk. Jobs are disappearing. The cost of health care, your children’s college, gasoline and groceries are rising all the time with no end in sight, while your most important asset — your home — is losing value every day.”
But the address recalled the old McCain brand of the experienced fighter whom, he said, voters should trust in a foxhole.
“The next president won’t have time to get used to the office,” Mr. McCain said, with his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, at his side at the Virginia appearance. “He won’t have the luxury of studying up on the issues before he acts. He will have to act immediately. And to do that, he will need experience, courage, judgment and a bold plan of action to take this country in a new direction.”
Then he added, in a knock at President Bush, “We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change.”
Mr. McCain’s advisers, who are facing polls that show Mr. Obama gaining momentum and Mr. McCain’s negative attacks of recent weeks as largely counterproductive, said he would deliver a new speech on the economy on Tuesday, a day after Mr. Obama released several new proposals for dealing with the economic crisis. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mr. McCain’s chief economic adviser, told reporters the speech would contain “specific new measures,” although it was unclear how extensive those measures would be.
Over all, the McCain campaign has sent out confused signals in recent days as top advisers have presented conflicting versions of when Mr. McCain would deliver his economic speech and what he would say. A Republican close to the campaign said Saturday that donors had been told Mr. McCain would deliver a major economic address on Monday, but a top adviser said later on Saturday that no speech had been written and that the campaign did not know what Mr. McCain was doing Saturday night, let alone Monday.
On Sunday morning, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a confidant of Mr. McCain, said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation” that Mr. McCain was weighing proposals to cut taxes on investors’ capital gains and dividends, even though Mr. McCain’s existing economic plan already calls for such cuts. Mr. McCain’s advisers later said they did not know why Mr. Graham had said what he did.
Even in the face of the dismal polls, most of Mr. McCain’s campaign staff continues to hold out hope, however distant, that Mr. McCain or events will somehow turn the situation around. But more often the mood is anxious, angry or subdued, interspersed with occasional moments of escape. Last Tuesday after the presidential debate in Nashville, Mr. Salter and Steve Schmidt, who is managing Mr. McCain’s campaign, were at a karaoke bar until the small hours of the morning as Mr. Salter sang his way through a range of Bob Dylan songs.
Michael Cooper contributed reporting from New York.
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