Poli-break: McCain Accepts GOP Nomination

Leadership of the Republican party moved from President George W. Bush to Sen. John McCain of Arizona Thursday when McCain delivered a subdued speech accepting the Republican nomination for the presidency. McCain pledged to end partisan politics, shrink government, and return the GOP to its roots and away from the last eight year's of conservative leadership, even though his record indicated he supported 90 percent of what the Bush administration proposed during those years.

In a speech in which he claimed to have more similarities than differences with Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, McCain painted himself as a flawed public servant whose character was shaped during the Vietnam War, when he was held as a POW. He offered little specifics about his plans to reshape the economy or win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he pledged to change how government works, echoing Obama's own campaign for change.

“Let me just offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first-country-second crowd: Change is coming,” he said.

On MSNBC, Tom Brokaw asked McCain supporter Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania and secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, about his assessment: "But the fact is, governor, that you have had eight years of a Bush administration and a lot of Republicans in Congress for the last eight years, so why wouldn't the American people say, look they had their shot we're going to change?"

"Because John Bush - because John McCain is very much his own man," Ridge said.