Released on: August 29, 2008, 7:34 am

Press Release Author: 3olome

Industry: Government

Press Release Summary: Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party presidential
nomination on Thursday, declaring that the "American promise has been threatened" by
eight years under President Bush and that John McCain represented a continuation of
policies that undermined the nation's economy and imperiled its standing around the
world.

Press Release Body: The speech by Senator Obama, in front of an audience of nearly
80,000 people on a warm night in a football stadium refashioned into a vast
political stage for television viewers, left little doubt how he intended to press
his campaign against Mr. McCain this fall.

In cutting language, and to cheers that echoed across the stadium, he linked Mr.
McCain to what he described as the "failed presidency of George W. Bush" and -
reflecting what has been a central theme of his campaign since he entered the race -
"the broken politics in Washington."

"America, we are better than these last eight years," he said. "We are a better
country than this."

But Mr. Obama went beyond attacking Mr. McCain by linking him to Mr. Bush and his
policies. In the course of a 42-minute speech that ended with a booming display of
fireworks and a shower of confetti, he offered searing and far-reaching attacks on
his presumptive Republican opponent, repeatedly portraying him as the face of the
old way of politics and failed Republican policies.

He said Mr. McCain was out of touch with the problems of everyday Americans. "It's
not because John McCain doesn't care," he said. "It's because John McCain doesn't
get it."

And he went so far as to attack the presumed strength of Mr. McCain's campaign,
national security. "You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden
to the gates of hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives," he
said.

The speech loomed as arguably Mr. Obama's most important of the campaign to date. It
was an opportunity to present himself to Americans just now beginning to tune in on
this campaign, to make the case against Mr. McCain and to offer what many Democrats
say he has failed to offer to date: an idea of what he stands for, beyond a promise
of change.

To that end, he emphasized what he described as concrete steps he would take to
address the anxieties of working-class Americans, promising tax cuts for the middle
class and pledging to wean the country from dependence on Middle East oil within 10
years to address high fuel prices.

With the speech, Mr. Obama closed out his party's convention here and prepared for a
quick shift of public attention to the Republicans as Mr. McCain moved to name his
running mate and his party got ready for its convention in St. Paul on Monday.

He delivered it in a most unconventional setting, becoming the third nominee of a
major party in the nation's history to leave the site of his convention to give his
acceptance speech at a stadium. In this case, it was Invesco Field, set against the
Rockies and about a mile from the arena where he had been nominated the night
before. His aides chose the stadium to signal a break from typical politics and to
permit thousands of his supporters from across the country to hear him speak.

And it came on a night that offered - by the coincidence of scheduling - a reminder
of the historic nature of the Obama candidacy: 45 years to the day after the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the Mall in
Washington. Mr. Obama is the first African-American to be nominated for the White
House by a major party, a fact that, for all its significance, has been barely
mentioned over the course of this four-day gathering.

Even in invoking the anniversary of the King speech, Mr. Obama only alluded to race.
But he quoted a famous phrase from Dr. King's address to reinforce a central theme
of his own speech. "America, we cannot turn back," Mr. Obama said. "Not with so much
work to be done."

Mr. McCain marked the occasion of the speech by releasing a television advertisement
in which, looking into the camera, he paid tribute to Mr. Obama and his
accomplishment. "How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day,"
Mr. McCain said. "Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight, Senator, job well
done.

The advertisement stood in stark contrast to a summer of slashing attacks on Mr.
Obama by Mr. McCain that apparently contributed to the tightening of this race. And
the softer tone did not last; Mr. Obama was still on the stage, watching the
fireworks, when Mr. McCain's campaign issued a statement attacking him.

"Tonight, Americans witnessed a misleading speech that was so fundamentally at odds
with the meager record of Barack Obama," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Mr.
McCain.

In his speech, Mr. Obama scored Mr. McCain for raising questions about his
patriotism, and trying, he said, to turn a big election into a fight on small
squabbles.

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