(CBS/AP) John McCain appeared Thursday night before a cheering crowd at the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, and began the final stage of his presidential campaign, which many considered doomed to failure just one year ago.
"Tonight, I have a privilege given few Americans -- the privilege of accepting our party's nomination for President of the United States," McCain said as the crowd broke into chants of "USA! USA!"
"And I accept it with gratitude, humility and confidence," McCain said.
McCain, a POW turned political rebel, vowed to vanquish the "constant partisan rancor" plaguing the nation as he launched his fall campaign for the White House. "Change is coming" to Washington, he promised the Republican National Convention.
"I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again," McCain said in remarks prepared for the prime time address. "I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not," he said of his rival for the White House, Sen. Barack Obama.
McCain also invoked the five years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison. "I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said. "I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's."
McCain, 72 and campaigning to become the oldest first-term president in history, faced a delicate assignment as he formally accepted his party's presidential nomination: presenting his credentials as a reformer willing to take on his own party and stressing his independence from an unpopular President Bush - all without breaking faith with his Republican base.
He and running mate Sarah Palin were departing their convention city immediately after the Arizona senator's acceptance speech, bound for Wisconsin and an early start on the final weeks of the White House campaign.
Palin has been the object of intense scrutiny since McCain tapped her last week as the party's first vice presidential candidate. "I'm very proud to have introduced our next vice president to the country," he said. "But I can't wait until I introduce her to Washington."
The last night of the McCain-Palin convention also marked the end of an intensive stretch of politics with the potential to reshape the race. Democrats held their own convention last week in Denver, nominating Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as running mate for Obama, whose own acceptance speech drew an estimated 84,000 partisans to an outdoor football stadium.
Before McCain accepted the nomination, his wife Cindy McCain took the stage to urge support for people caught up in Hurricane Gustav and introduced their seven children to the cheering delegates.
McCain's wife then told of "stirring stories" she has heard of people helping people in bad times. She said more could be done "if only the federal government would get itself under control and out of our way."
(Read the full text of Cindy McCain's speech)
A new CBS News poll shows the race for the White House is now dead even, with McCain closing an eight-point deficit since last weekend.
Ahead lie the traditional major checkpoints - presidential and vice presidential debates, millions of dollars in ads - but also the unscripted, spontaneous moments that can take on outsized importance in the race to pick a president.
The Arizona senator paid a brief visit to the Xcel center at mid-afternoon to check out a speaking podium remade overnight to capture the intimacy of a town-hall meeting that has become his trademark.
He was accompanied by his wife, Cindy, as well as two close allies, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat-turned-independent.
McCain's wife and Graham also had speaking slots on the convention's final night, as did former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who had featured prominently in speculation about a running mate.
That was an honor that went unexpectedly to Palin, the first female vice presidential candidate in party history, a 44-year-old Alaska governor virtually unknown nationally a week ago.
In the days since, she has faced a storm of scrutiny, some of it relating to her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and her time as governor, but most involving her 17-year-old unmarried daughter who is pregnant.
For the most part, McCain's aides have kept Palin out of public sight while vociferously defending her readiness to become president. She emerged Wednesday night during prime time to deliver a smiling, sarcastic attack on Obama that generated roars of approval - and acceptance - from the delegates.
She followed up in the hours before McCain's convention appearance with a meeting with Republican governors and a fundraising appeal that blamed Democrats for spreading "misinformation and flat-out lies" about her family and her.
Even so, there were fresh questions about her readiness to sit one chair away from the Oval Office.
McCain has cited her authority over the Alaska National Guard as one example. But in a memo last spring, Air Force Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell warned that "missions are at risk" in the state's units because of a personnel shortage. The lack of qualified airmen, Campbell said, "has reached a crisis level."
In an interview on Wednesday with The Associated Press, Campbell said the situation has improved since then, but not enough to eliminate his concern that shortages will result in the burnout of troops.
McCain won the presidential nomination late Wednesday night in an anticlimactic vote that followed a campaign lasting most of a decade. He first ran for the White House in 2000, but lost the Republican nomination to Mr. Bush in a bruising struggle. He began the current campaign the Republican front-runner, but his chances seemed to collapse last winter when opposition to the Iraq war rose among independents and conservatives grew upset over his backing for legislation to give illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship.
In one of the most remarkable comebacks in recent times, he recovered to win the New Hampshire primary in early January, then wrapped up the nomination on Feb. 5 with big-state primary victories on Super Tuesday.
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