Obama accepts, vows change

UPDATED:

DENVER — Barack Obama on Thursday night completed his historic journey from a freshman lawmaker with soaring oratory to America’s first black major-party presidential candidate, accepting the Democratic nomination and promising a stadium full of supporters a bold change that would fix “the broken politics of Washington” after years of Republican rule.

With the granduer of the Rocky Mountains as a backdrop, Mr. Obama seized his chance to tell the entire nation in detail how he would change course from President Bush on issues as diverse as energy independence, national security and economic growth and to separate himself from the ideas of the more seasoned Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain.

“America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this,” Mr. Obama told an estimated 80,000 cheering and flag-waving fans who streamed into the cavernous Invesco Field at Mile High to witness history.

FULL TEXT:Barack Obama’s speech

Alternating between the evocative and the pragmatic, the Illinois Democrat laid clear blame for the country’s current wartime predicaments of high gas prices, soaring deficits and failing mortgages on President Bush.

“These challenges are not all of government’s making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed presidency of George W. Bush,” Mr. Obama charged.

“Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and independents across this great land enough! This moment — this election — is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive,” he said.

“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. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: ‘Eight is enough,’ ” he said.

With his acceptance, Mr. Obama, 47, shattered a once-unthinkable barrier in becoming the first black American to win a major-party presidential nomination and doing so just a half-century since some states would have treated him as a second-class citizen in terms of voting and public accommodations.

The date of his speech only heightened the sense of history, 45 years to the day since Martin Luther King made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. A handful of Democrats who witnessed that historic address in 1963 were in the stadium to see the man who fulfilled that dream, and King’s son Martin Luther King III was also to appear on stage.

Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, an icon of the civil rights movement, introduced Mr. King by telling the massive crowd: “I was there that day.”

“Tonight we gathered here in this magnificent stadium in Denver because we still have a dream. As a participant in the civil rights movement I can tell you that the road to victory will not be easy,” he said. “We are making a down payment on the fulfillment of that dream. We prove that a dream still burns in the hearts of every American, that this dream was too right, too necessary, too noble to ever die.”

Throughout the week long gathering, many black Americans could be seen weeping with joy at what they were witnessing. Shortly after 10 p.m. EDT Thursday, Mr. Obama uttered the words they longed to hear: “With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.”

The Illinois senator became the first person since John F. Kennedy in 1960 to accept a presidential nomination in an open-air stadium. With prime-time television watching, Mr. Obama delivered his address beneath a Greek revival portico, reminiscent of the national monuments in Washington, erected at the 50-yard line of the stadium where pro football’s Denver Broncos play.

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