McCain basks in Palin's showing

PUEBLO • It could have gone down as Sen. John McCain's first campaign appearance after it became clear he would not be the nation's 44th president.

But buoyed by a bullet-dodging performance by his vice presidential nominee Thursday, an ebullient McCain was back on the campaign trail Friday, telling a town hall gathering here that Sen. Barack Obama "has the rhetoric, not the record" and promising that "change is coming to Washington and Wall Street."

The crowd in a gymnasium at the Pueblo campus of Colorado State University cheered long and loud for the Republican presidential candidate.

But as often happens at McCain campaign appearances, he got his biggest ovation when talking about his running mate.

"How about Sarah Palin last night?" the Arizona senator asked, and the crowd roared its approval of the Alaska governor, who stumbled in recent television interviews but held her own in a debate against Sen. Joe Biden on Thursday.

Though the instant polls had Biden winning the vice presidential debate, the absence of gaffes by Palin had to be a huge relief to her supporters. In any case, they were unabashed in showing their support for her in Pueblo.

"I almost felt a little sorry last night for my old friend Joe Biden," McCain said, describing Palin as "an inspiration to millions and millions of Americans."
"Viva la barracuda!" he yelled, putting a little Hispanic twist on Palin's "Sarah Barracuda" nickname from her days as a high school basketball player.

Palin's performance and congressional approval Friday of a financial system rescue bill that should reduce the spotlight on the economy, generally regarded as McCain's shakiest area, may have given him time to regain lost ground in a contest that recent polls have shown to be slipping from his grasp.

Not all the news was favorable to McCain. Before he took the stage in Pueblo, the Labor Department announced the nation's worst monthly job loss in more than five years.

His audience was not nearly as large or as enthusiastic as the one he attracted Sept. 6 at the Colorado Springs Airport. It would be a mistake to draw any conclusions from such a comparison, since the Colorado Springs event was on a Saturday, not during the regular workweek.

Still, the Pueblo crowd was not bigger than 2,500, nowhere close to the 4,500 tickets the McCain campaign said it had distributed.

Pollster.com's "poll of polls" shows Obama with a 3-percentage-point lead in Colorado. Nevertheless, McCain exuded confidence.

"We must and will win the state of Colorado," he said. And while he acknowledged "I'm the underdog in this race," he added: "I've always loved being the underdog."

McCain was introduced by Vera Ortegon, a Pueblo City Council member who praised the candidate in heavily accented English. Like Obama did when he visited here Sept. 15, McCain used Pueblo as a place to reach out to the Hispanic vote.

He devoted much of his remarks to addressing the nation's financial crisis. He said his support of the bailout plan, which remains deeply unpopular among many conservatives, should not be mistaken for favoritism for financiers.

"I am a proud opponent of waste and pork barrel spending," McCain said. "But I also have to tell you, government has to step in at this time and save Main Street from the challenges and the disaster that's looming."

"Our first object, and our first goal, and our only agenda," he said, "is to help Main Street, not Wall Street and not the corruption and evilness in Washington, D.C."

The crowd grew quiet during these remarks, and McCain acknowledged later "we will disagree from time to time."

But he was cheered when he described the root of the problem as being in Congress.

"We'll stop the bleeding," he said of the bailout. "But now we've got to reform the way we do business in Washington."

Later, in response to one of a half-dozen questions from the audience, he said, "I'm not interested in helping Wall Street in any way," adding that it's the "innocent bystander" who needs to be helped.

McCain took pains to distance himself from a remark he made in August, when he said the multistate agreement governing the distribution of precious Colorado River water "obviously needs to be renegotiated" in favor of downstream states.

"I will never ever seek a renegotiation of the Colorado River Compact," he said Friday, and he delivered this message to Coloradans on behalf of his fellow Arizonans: "Thank you for the water. Thank you for the water. Thank you for the water."