By Dana Milbank
Friday, September 5, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 4

"You all know, I've been called a maverick," John McCain declared Thursday night as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination.

Indeed he had. Over and over again through the evening's program. "Some people call him a maverick," said former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, one of McCain's warm-up acts. "May we summon ourselves to our best efforts and call this maverick forward."

"The original maverick," said another speaker, David Cappiello.

Convention organizers distributed hand-painted signs announcing "Maverick." Biographical videos proclaimed the "maverick" status of McCain and his vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

But the most striking thing about the message of the maverick Thursday night was how conventional it was. There were the requisite references to Sept. 11, including a video showing, to an ominous bass, the planes hitting the towers and the towers collapsing. "We remember buildings burning, bodies falling," the narrator said. There were the mandatory multiple warnings about "a dangerous world," leading to McCain's assurance that "we face many threats in this dangerous world, but I'm not afraid of them; I'm prepared for them."

And McCain read the usual Republican boilerplate. "I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them," he said, to boos from the crowd. "I will open new markets to our goods and services; my opponent will close them." (More boos.) "I will cut government spending. He will increase it." (Boos again.) He spoke of school choice. He called for more oil drilling. He opposed Obama's "health-care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor."

"We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench," the onetime maverick recited.

With such predictable fare, the intrigue in the room rested primarily in the backdrop behind the candidate (it changed like a mood ring, from green to blue) and in the audience. Three times during his speech, hecklers interrupted, forcing the audience to drown out the disturbance with chants of "USA." "My dear friends," McCain said during one interruption, "please don't be diverted by the ground noise and the static." Perhaps the most daring gesture of the evening was made by the convention planners, who tried to get the mostly old, overwhelmingly white delegates to dance to Kenny Loggins's "Footloose" and "Highway to the Danger Zone," then Heart's "Barracuda."

Largely missing was the McCain of yore, who campaigned against the "Agents of Intolerance" on the religious right and the "Death Star" of the Republican establishment, instead promising honest economics and clean politics. Missing, too, is the McCain who won the Republican primary with freewheeling and frequently off-message town hall meetings. In its place was a convention program that hewed to the traditional attacks on the Democrats.

Republicans came to town a listless and somewhat demoralized party, and the embarrassing revelations about Palin (the latest: She attended six colleges in six years) haven't helped. But Wednesday night's speech by Palin -- a self-described pit bull with lipstick -- electrified the Xcel Energy Center here. By Thursday, when the official theme of the convention was "peace," Republicans were eager for a fight.

On Wednesday, Palin went after Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama with vengeance: a man lacking "actual responsibilities," a man who sees the presidency as a "journey of personal discovery," a dilettante who "authored two memoirs but not a single major law," and a guy who wants to "reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world." By Thursday, she was accusing the Democratic ticket, without evidence, of "misinformation and flat-out lies" and being "vicious in their attacks directed toward me, my family and John McCain."

The anger was contagious. "Button up your chin straps, boys," Danny Diaz, communications director of the Republican National Committee, wrote to the Democrats' spokesman, Damien LaVera, at 1 a.m. Thursday. Continuing the football metaphor, he added: "Two a days are over and full contact has begun."

Seconds after the opening prayer at Thursday's session, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the first speaker, was talking about the Democrats' "inexperienced presidential nominee in a dangerous era," a "vice presidential nominee who's the handmaiden to liberal special interest groups," and a "do-nothing Democratic Congress."

That set the tone. Sen. Mel Martinez: "He said he would meet with rogue leaders without condition." Gov. Tim Pawlenty: "Barack Obama gives a good speech, but the best sermons aren't preached, they're lived." Sen. Lindsey Graham: "Barack Obama's campaign is built around us losing in Iraq." The backbenchers followed the lead when they got their turns at the microphone: "Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi and her allies, are obsessed with an ultra-liberal agenda. . . . The next commander in chief must not only know how to defeat an enemy but know how to inspire a nation with more than platitudes and cliches. . . . Who do you trust to defend your children against the haters and killers whose only creed is evil?"

McCain, in his acceptance speech, lamented the "constant partisan rancor" of the capital, offered his "respect and admiration" to Obama and took a maverick-style swipe at his own party. "We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption." The crowd was unmoved.

But his brandishing of his work with the other party became a way to scold his opponent. "I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again, he said. "I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not."

In a nod to political realities, there wasn't a single mention of President Bush before McCain took the stage, and scant reference to the economy. Instead of dealing with those delicate topics, barely a speaker all night passed up the opportunity to mention McCain having been a prisoner of war in Hanoi. McCain himself gave a moving description of his imprisonment: "I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell and left to die."

But that honorable story turned into a way to take a swipe at Obama. "I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's," he said. "I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need."

It was time for the maverick's convention to end in the conventional way, with a balloon-drop.