A little girls asked, "Granny, do all fairy tales begin with Once upon a time?"

TORONTO STAR EDITORIAL

McCain's suspect winds of change
Sep 06, 2008 04:30 AM

John McCain is scrambling to steal a march on Barack Obama by rebranding himself as an agent of change in a season when most Americans urgently want a new direction. "The old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second, Washington crowd" should know that "change is coming," he vowed in St. Paul on Thursday night, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination.

But if Washington is such a cesspool of corruption and waste, why hand the White House to a man who has been in Congress for 26 years and who believes U.S. President George Bush is right most of the time? Aren't Obama and his Democrats the likelier agents of change?

That is a question Americans must ask themselves between now and Nov. 4, and the Republican convention did little to answer it.

After a kickoff dampened by Hurricane Gustav and telling no-shows by Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Republican gala caught fire briefly on Wednesday night when vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former governors Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee delivered a series of red-meat, jingoistic, media-bashing speeches. But it slipped back into snooze mode the next day, with McCain peddling empty slogans in a meandering, contradictory, policy-lite address.

McCain's low-key pitch was, essentially: I'm a hero, vote for me.

The self-styled "maverick" offered no credible prescription for cutting 6 per cent unemployment, easing the mortgage crisis or making health care and post-secondary education affordable. He plans to extend Bush's ruinously expensive tax cuts for the rich, and he will tackle a $500 billion deficit by vetoing $18 billion in waste. It's nonsense. And it contrasts unfavourably with Obama's fiscally more credible program to roll back tax breaks for the richest, give most working families a break, curb dependency on Mideast oil, and provide health coverage for all.

McCain's task in St. Paul was to make his slogan, "Change you can trust," as believable as Obama's "Change you can believe in." He failed.

So it was up to Palin and the wrecking crew to tackle the true business of the Republican campaign. As McCain vowed to reach across the "constant partisan rancour" of Washington, the others cheerfully fanned America's culture wars by tarring Obama as an elitist underachiever who is out of touch with heartland values and by cynically distorting his message. Obama will "reduce the strength of America," read "Islamic terrorists" their rights, and forfeit "victory" in Iraq, they warned. He'd cower before "evil extremism" and even give "madmen the benefit of the doubt." So much for bridging the great divide.

In one especially oddball aside, Huckabee accused Obama of wanting to import "lots of ideas from Europe" about cradle-to-grave social services. Was that meant to terrify the millions of Americans who have no health insurance?

The Republican message was, at root, incoherent and unpersuasive. At one point McCain drew deserved applause for urging Americans to better the country by becoming teachers, joining the military, running for public office, comforting the afflicted, or defending the rights of the oppressed. Yet not 24 hours earlier, Palin had sneered at Obama for being a "community organizer." Like much of the Republican message in St. Paul, it didn't quite add up.