September 09, 2008	Tuesday	Ramazan 8, 1429

KANSAS CITY (Missouri), Sept 8: The US presidential campaign moved into high gear on Monday as two opinion polls showed Republican John McCain taking the lead over Democratic rival Barack Obama just eight weeks from election day.

McCain, a decorated war hero who based much of his early campaign on the strength of his experience, wrestled last week for Obama’s mantle of change, with the help of his surprise vice presidential pick Sarah Palin.

A USA Today/Gallup survey showed McCain ahead by 50 to 46 per cent among registered voters, a turnaround from a previous poll by the newspaper just before last week’s Republican National Convention.

That poll had McCain trailing Obama by seven percentage points.

Twenty-nine per cent of respondents said the surprise choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee had made them more likely to vote for McCain on Nov 4, but 21 per cent said their vote in support of the Republican ticket was now less likely.

Vice President Dick Cheney hailed the nomination of Palin -- a Christian conservative with no national political experience -- and called her convention speech “superb.” “We have had all kinds of vice presidents over the years and everybody brings a different set of experiences to the office and also a different kind of understanding with whoever the president is,” Cheney said, speaking in Rome where he is meeting Italian leaders.

“There is no reason why Sarah Palin can’t be a successful vice president in a McCain administration.” A separate Gallup daily tracking poll found McCain had moved into a 48 to 45 per cent lead ahead of the Nov 4 election -- his best performance since May.

Experts attributed the McCain bounce to his party’s convention and the surprise naming of Alaska Governor Palin.

“He’s in a far better position than his people imagined he would be in at this point,” political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia told USA Today.

McCain and Palin vowed to use their history of fighting corruption to shake up Washington at a series of campaign stops after the Republican National Convention.

“We’re going to win this election, and let me offer a little advance warning to the old big spending, do-nothing, me-first country-second Washington crowd: change is coming. Change is coming,” McCain told cheering crowds in Colorado.

Obama ridiculed McCain’s promise of change and hammered the Arizona senator on the limping US economy, saying the Republican represented no change from Bush.

“John McCain, who is a good man and has a compelling biography, has embraced and adopted the George Bush economic platform,” Obama said Sunday on ABC television.

The Illinois senator argued that voters would realise that the election was a choice between a new direction and discredited Republican policies.

“If they like what they’ve had over the last eight years, then they’ll go with McCain. And if they don’t like it, hopefully they’ll go with me,” he said.

The Democrats have had a hard time targeting Palin, who is popular among conservatives and has garnered public sympathy in the wake of news that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant and planned to keep the baby.

Senator Hillary Clinton, extremely popular among white women during the hard-fought Democratic primary, has refused to criticise Palin thus far even though the McCain campaign has actively targeted her disgruntled supporters.

Clinton hit the campaign trail in Florida on Monday, stomping for Obama at three events in the battleground state and making good on her convention pledge to fight to put her former foe in the White House.

“No way, no how, no McCain-Palin,” the New York senator said after McCain’s Republican convention address last week, after initially saluting Palin’s “historic nomination” as the first Republican female vice presidential pick.

Aides announced meanwhile that Obama was to meet former president Bill Clinton at a fence-mending lunch later this week in New York, after months of rancour on the campaign trail.—AFP