McCain vows to end ‘rancor’

St. Paul, Minn. | John McCain formally claimed the Republican presidential nomination and leadership of his increasingly unified party Thursday night, telling them that they must “get back to basics” and declaring that the scars he earned in war and in Congress make him better-equipped than Democrat Barack Obama to silence “partisan rancor.”

“Again and again, I’ve worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed. That’s how I will govern as president,” the former Vietnam prisoner of war promised. “I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again. I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not.”

Exactly a week after Mr. Obama wowed a stadium filled with fans in Denver, Mr. McCain used a lower-key address to try to re-establish himself in voters’ minds as the anti-Washington maverick who had earned bipartisan appreciation over the past decade.

Rather than youthful vigor, he offered experience and determination forged by torture and five years in a Vietnam prison. Instead of history in electing the first black president, he offered history by delivering the first female vice-presidential candidate. Instead of soaring rhetoric, he offered a plain-spoken promise to end partisanship.

“I don’t work for a party, I don’t work for a special interest, I don’t work for myself. I work for you,” he said.

Republicans are emerging from four days in Minnesota unified and energized, thanks largely to Mr. McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate and to a convention that, far from being overshadowed by Hurricane Gustav, has drawn tremendous interest.

“I can’t wait until I introduce her to Washington,” he said of Mrs. Palin. “And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second crowd: Change is coming.”

Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, introduced her husband as “a man tested and true.”

She called him a “loving and true husband and a magnificent father” whose time in Congress hasn’t changed him - “a man who’s served in Washington without ever becoming a Washington insider.”

The speech was interrupted early by several demonstrators from Code Pink, the group opposed to the Iraq war that has dogged many of his events. At one point, two of them rushed from the press stand at the side of the stage, trying to reach the floor.

They were blocked by party officials and shouted down by the crowd chanting “U-S-A,” and Mr. McCain used them as a symbol of what is wrong with Washington.

“Don’t get distracted by the ground noise and static,” he said. “Americans want us to stop yelling at each other.”

He teared up at another point when recalling the time he spent in the POW camp.

“They put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn’t do anything,” he said. “I couldn’t even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life.”

He said that’s what drives him.

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