Soon after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin finished her speech Wednesday night, the Obama campaign sent out the following response:

“The speech that Governor Palin gave was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush’s speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we’ve heard from George Bush for the last eight years.  If Governor Palin and John McCain want to define ‘change’ as voting with George Bush 90% of the time, that’s their choice, but we don’t think the American people are ready to take a 10% chance on change,” said Bill Burton, Obama Campaign Spokesman.

At his town hall meeting in New Philadelphia, Ohio, Obama cited a quote from McCain’s campaign manager, who told the Washington Post that “this election is not about issues.” Rick Davis tried to clarify his statement on a conference call, saying he meant the election is partially about issues, but it’s also about a conglomerate of “stuff,” including the candidates’ views on leadership, character, and values.

Obama had a slightly different interpretation. “He said it’s not going to be about – it’s not going to be about the issues, it’s going to be about personalities, which probably explains why last night when they were speaking, all these speakers came up – you did not hear a single word about the economy,” he said of last night’s Republican convention (the Obama campaign could not say if the candidate monitored last night’s events from his Chicago home).

Obama has been working hard to portray John McCain as out of touch when it comes to the economy. He’s poked fun at the Republican for not knowing how many homes he owns, and defining wealthy as those making more than $5 million. He’s linked McCain to George W. Bush by saying he supports the same tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans as the unpopular president supported. Obama has given McCain a hard time for claiming we’ve undergone “great progress” economically, and he’s highlighted remarks made by one time top advisor Phil Gramm for saying this was a “nation of whiners” who were going through a “mental recession.”

The onslaught is meant to appeal to those who feel as though the economy is the biggest issue this election, and continued today when Obama made an issue out of the Republicans’ omission last night.

“Not once did people mention the hardships that folks are going through, not once did they mention what are we going to do about keeping jobs here in Ohio. Not once did they mention what are we doing about all these retirees that are losing their pensions. Not once did they mention how are we going to make sure social security is there for the next generation. Not once did they mention how are we going to make college more affordable so that young people aren’t taking out 40 or 50 thousands dollars in debt. Not once did they mention how are we going to make sure people can stay in their homes,” he said. “I guess I don’t blame them because if you don’t have any issues to run on I guess you want it all to be on personality. And if you’ve got George Bush’s track record and John McCain voting 90% of the time in agreement with George Bush they you probably don’t want to talk about the issues either,” he continued.

The Obama campaign is doing its best to make George Bush the star of the Republican convention. They began airing an ad on national cable networks linking John McCain to the unpopular president, and have already issued a response to Mr. Bush’s yet-to-be-delivered speech tonight.

From Obama campaign manager David Plouffe:

“Tonight, George Bush enthusiastically passed the torch to the man who’s earned it by voting with him 90% of the time, and who will continue this President’s legacy for the next four years – his disastrous economic policies, his foreign policy that hasn’t made us safer, and his misguided war in Iraq that’s costing us $10 billion a month.  The man George Bush needs may be John McCain, but the change America needs is Barack Obama.”

Just released by the Obama camp:

Excerpts of the Remarks of Senator Barack Obama

“The American Promise”

Democratic National Convention

August 28, 2008

Denver, Colorado

As prepared for delivery

“Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story – of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren’t well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to.

“It is that promise that has always set this country apart – that through hard work and sacrifice, each of us can pursue our individual dreams but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams as well.

“It is why I stand here tonight. Because for two hundred and thirty two years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women – students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors — found the courage to keep it alive.

“We meet at one of those defining moments – a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.

“Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit card bills you can’t afford to pay and tuition that is beyond your reach

“These challenges are not all of government’s making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed presidency of George W. Bush.

“America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.”

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“I have a speech tonight that I wanted to practice out on you guys,” Barack Obama said to an Illinois women’s delegation luncheon in Denver today. “See if it works in front of a friendly audience,” he joked.

Hours before he will speak to an estimated 75,000 people at Denver’s Mile High Stadium tonight to accept his party’s nomination, Obama dropped by the luncheon to say thank you. “I just wanted to come by because I haven’t had a chance to spend as much time with you as I’d like - to let you know that I have not forgotten where I came from,” he told the gathering, which was surprised by the entourage that interrupted their meal.

Of course Obama did not practice his speech on the roomful of supporters. In fact, he’s likely still tinkering with the speech.

Obama’s top advisor, David Axelrod, told reporters yesterday that the speech “is substantially written, but as with all Obama speeches he’ll be refining it, and buffing it up and working on it, I’m sure, right until the very end.”

As for what to expect tonight, Obama himself told reporters it won’t be like his soaring speech at the 2004 Democratic convention because his role “is different now.” As a member of John Kerry’s supporting cast, he said he “could structure a speech that was all about inspiration and broad themes.” But this time around it will be more “workmanlike.”

So does that mean boring? “Boring? Yeah, that’s why it’s taking so long because it was really not boring, and we were trying to get it to be boring - we were having a hard time with that and we’re hoping to get it boring in time,” Axelrod said with a smile. “I don’t think he was saying, ‘I’m purposely trying to tamp that down.’ I think he has some things he wants to say that are very simple and direct about where we need to go as a country…I think he thinks we can be direct, and clear with people, yet still not boring,” he explained.

The speech will not be biographical in nature, Axelrod said, but will focus on the issues at stake and the choices this election. “This speech and this election are not about Barack Obama. It’s about the American people. It’s about this country. It’s about the direction that we have to go to get us out of the ditch we are in and so he’s going to spent the bulk of his time talking about the country and where we are today and where we need to go,” he said, adding Obama will make “a respectful argument” when it comes to John McCain.

The candidate has been working on the speech since before his Hawaiian vacation and is the principal speechwriter. According to Axelrod, he wrote the speech in longhand before putting it on his computer to crank out a draft to his top speechwriter.

The campaign would not guess how long the speech will run.

Just yesterday Barack Obama was up until 2am fiddling with his convention speech. It’s the third day in a row Obama has spent hours working on the speech, set to be delivered on Thursday in Denver.

Yesterday Obama downplayed expectations, saying, “It may not be as good as the other headliners the first three nights, but hopefully it’ll make clear the choice that the American people are going to face in November.”

But expectations are high thanks to his widely heralded speech at the 2004 convention in Boston, which catapulted him into the national spotlight and gave legitimacy to his presidential hopes.

Today Obama told reporters things have changed over the last four years. “2004 I think was unique. Nobody knew who I was and, I think, even up to the time that I walked onto the stage and we handed out Obama signs people were thinking, ‘What is this? And so you know, I don’t think you can duplicate that kind of moment, but more importantly my role is different now,” he said.

In 2004, Barack Obama had just been elected to the U.S. Senate - hadn’t even been sworn in yet - and was a self-described “member of a supporting cast” for Team Kerry. “So I could structure a speech that was all about inspiration and broad themes,” he explained.

Don’t expect that same kind of broad inspiration from this year’s Belle of the Ball. “This speech is different. I think people know that I can give the kind of speech that I gave four years ago. That’s not the question on voters’ minds. I think they’re much more interested in what am I going to do to help them in their lives, and so in that sense I think this is going to be a more workmanlike speech. You know, I’m not aiming for a lot of high rhetoric. I’m much more concerned with communicating how I intend to help middle class families live their lives,” he said.

Obama will accept the nomination of his party at Invesco Field in front of an estimated 70,000 on Thursday night.

Barack Obama’s day was far from over once his high profile VP announcement rally in Springfield, IL, ended yesterday.

Upon returning from his day trip, Obama dropped his wife Michelle off at their Hyde Park home in Chicago Saturday evening. 20 minutes later, the candidate hit the road once again and headed to a downtown Chicago hotel, where he spent four hours and 15 minutes inside working on his convention speech Thursday.

It was the second day in a row that Obama spent on the speech, and considering his 2004 convention speech was the genesis of his political stardom, the bar has been set pretty high. If it’s not the most important speech of his career, it certainly ranks right up there.

The campaign explained that Obama is working out of the hotel because he prefers a quiet place to write (longhand - not on a computer). 27-year-old writer Jon Favreau is aiding the senator on the project.

Talking to reporters on his campaign plane early this morning in Tel Aviv, Barack Obama asked reporters what they would do with their down time in Berlin tonight. “You guys got any big plans?” he asked before he said he’d love to “tour around a little bit.”

Rather, the candidate met with Chancellor Merkel, Foreign Minister Steinmeir, and the mayor of Berlin, who presented the presumptive Democratic nominee with a porcelain bear. Admiring his gift, Obama smiled and said, “That’s a beautiful, beautiful bear.”

Following his meetings, Obama dropped by the Ritz Carlton around the corner from his equally opulent hotel to work out. It seems that every time the candidate hits the streets in his conspicuous motorcade, hundreds flock to catch a glimpse along the city’s sidewalks. There was even a big crowd waiting for him at the Ritz - a stop announced to traveling press minutes before he left to work out.

An enormous crowd is expected at Obama’s only public speaking event abroad - to be held in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park tonight. Some foreign press are predicting between 100,000 and 1,000,000 will show up.

But when asked about it on his campaign plane this morning, Obama tried to downplay expectations. “I doubt we’re gonna have a million” show up. “Let’s tamp down expectations here. If we get a few tens of thousands…” he said. “We have really no idea what’s going to happen. Sort of a crap shoot,” Obama said candidly.

The candidate said he began working on the speech about two weeks ago, and said he was happy with the final product. “It should be good,” he told the city’s mayor.

When asked by reporters if he considered it to be a campaign speech, he deadpanned, “As opposed to?”

He then explained, “The people in the crowd aren’t voters, so in that sense its not designed to get them to the polls. You know its not a political rally. Hopefully it will be viewed as a substantive articulation of the relationship I’d  like to see between the US and Europe.”

Realizing people at home will be watching, Obama said, “Well I mean, I’m hoping to communicate across the Atlantic about the relationship and how we can build on it.”

Watch Obama discuss the speech here with reporters:

done

Senator Barack Obama will travel to Independence, Missouri, today, in the lead up to the Fourth of July, to deliver a “major” speech on patriotism. According to the campaign, the candidate “will discuss what patriotism means to him and what it requires of all Americans who love this country and want to see it do better.”

When Obama’s patriotism came under fire during the primary race for not always wearing a flag pin and for allegedly not putting his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance (a claim the Obama campaign denies), then Democratic frontrunner Obama angrily brushed off claims that he was unpatriotic. In Ohio, Obama told reporters in February that he was confident he could hold his own with Republicans when it comes to patriotism, and that it was a debate he was “happy to have.”

Republicans are the “party that presided over a war in which our troops did not get the body armor that they needed, or sending troops over how were untrained because of poor planning, or are not fulfilling the veterans benefits that these troops need when they come home, or undermining our constitution with warrant less wiretaps that are unnecessary. That is a debate that I am very happy to have. We’ll see what the American people think is the true definition of patriotism is,” he said.

Later in Pennsylvania, Obama said it would be “foolish” to critique John McCain for being an American patriot. “The guy is a war hero. He was a POW for years, and endured horrendous treatment and torture. So I would never challenge John McCain’s patriotism.”

So what can we expect today in Missouri? Looking at a speech Obama made last month in West Virginia to a group of veterans, Obama spoke about patriotism, and could be a preview.

“Abraham Lincoln once said, “I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives.  But I also like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.”  There is no doubt that we are a nation that is deeply proud of where we live.  But it is now our generation’s task to live in a way that my grandfather lived; to live the way that those heroes at Walter Reed have lived; the way that all those men and women who put on this nation’s uniform live each and every day.  It is now our task to live so that America will be proud of us.  That is true test of patriotism – the test that all of us must meet in the days and years to come.  I have no doubt that this nation is up to the challenge.”

NEW ORLEANS, LA — It is on. Almost exactly three months after John McCain clinched his party’s nomination and he finally has his opponent.

With that in mind, expect McCain’s prime time speech tonight to lay out his principles and message for a general election campaign targeting the Illinois Democrat. The presumptive GOP nominee was reviewing his address and making final edits alongside longtime speech writer and senior adviser, Mark Salter, aboard his flight from Memphis to New Orleans which landed the Big Easy about an hour ago.

“The focus of this campaign will be clear from this speech. This is going to be a campaign organized around big ideas, big change,” Salter tells Fox. “It was clear to us before tonight what this election was all about. It’s change. We know. We have always known. (McCain is) the perfect candidate in that environment.”

Look for McCain to discuss how he ‘walked the walk’ of change before Obama was ever ‘talking the talk.’ Aides say we should expect McCain to stress his record of pushing for bipartisan reform tonight AND explain why Obama’s ideas for change are not only old and but also wrong for the future.

We saw McCain start to lay out this message as early as mid-February when he hit Obama on delivering an “eloquent but empty call for change,” and as recently as yesterday during his speech to AIPAC where he argued that Obama’s proposal for a diplomatic initiative to Iran’s leadership was tried by previous administrations and failed.

“McCain has gone and tried to change the institution of Congress and fought epic battles that have gone on for years. Senator Obama has done nothing like that,” Salter adds.

UPDATE 5:45pm—In speech excerpts (below), first leaked to Drudge Report this afternoon, McCain will also look to defend his maverick brand tonight against Democratic allegations that he is a clone of President Bush.

You will hear from my opponent’s campaign in every speech, every interview, every press release that I’m running for President Bush’s third term. You will hear every policy of the President described as the Bush-McCain policy. Why does Senator Obama believe it’s so important to repeat that idea over and over again? Because he knows it’s very difficult to get Americans to believe something they know is false. So he tries to drum it into your minds by constantly repeating it rather than debate honestly the very different directions he and I would take the country. But the American people didn’t get to know me yesterday, as they are just getting to know Senator Obama. They know I have a long record of bipartisan problem solving. They’ve seen me put our country before any President — before any party — before any special interest — before my own interest. They might think me an imperfect servant of our country, which I surely am. But I am her servant first, last and always. ….

I disagreed strongly with the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the war in Iraq. I called for the change in strategy that is now, at last, succeeding where the previous strategy had failed miserably. I was criticized for doing so by Republicans. I was criticized by Democrats. I was criticized by the press. But I don’t answer to them. I answer to you. And I would be ashamed to admit I knew what had to be done in Iraq to spare us from a defeat that would endanger us for years, but I kept quiet because it was too politically hard for me to do. No ambition is more important to me than the security of the country I have defended all my adult life.

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