McCain Mounts Immediate Attack on Obama's Record

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McCain: 'Choice of Right Change, and Wrong Change'

Presumptive Republican nominee for president, John McCain spoke to supporters in Kenner, Louisiana Tuesday night; where he congratulated both Senators Clinton and Obama, but also said the election posed clear choices in the fall.

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A McCain-Obama matchup means voters will have a stark choice between two men who both assert that they will be the agents of upheaval in Washington. One is a military hero who Americans have known for decades. The other is a Chicago community organizer introduced to the public at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

McCain crossed the nominating finish line long before Obama, but he has struggled to take advantage of the extra time. McCain has spent the past two months unveiling campaign themes and taking swipes at Obama, but he has also been dogged by questions about his age and health, his wife's tax returns and his connection to controversial pastors and lobbyists. And some Republicans have expressed concern about how slowly McCain has moved to match Obama's organizational prowess across the nation.

After watching Clinton beat up on Obama, top McCain advisers say that the Republican nominee faces the likelihood of a revitalized rival who will quickly seek to unify his party and to tap into the obvious energy among Democratic activists and donors.

McCain advisers concede that the battle for the White House will play out in a political environment that is terrible for Republicans: Gas and food prices are high, economic anxiety runs deep, Bush is pushing an unpopular war, and 80 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.

But those advisers say the long Democratic battle has exposed serious weaknesses for Obama, especially among blue-collar voters, and provided a road map for questioning the nominee's lack of experience and judgment.

With the help of the Republican National Committee, McCain's campaign aims to portray Obama as weak and naive on foreign policy, with questionable judgment on big issues.

They will call him a liberal who is out of the mainstream. They will question his record on bipartisanship and cast him as an elitist who cannot identify with middle Americans.

McCain spoke in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans hit hard by Hurricane Katrina and a place that McCain's campaign said exemplifies the government dysfunction that he vows to fix. A couple of hundred people crammed into a small room at a local convention center, while nearly another thousand lined up outside.

A brass band played, and local high school cheerleaders cried: "Get those votes! Let's go, McCain! Get those votes, let's go!"