McCain Offers Voters a "Team Of Mavericks"

CHICAGO - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain accused rival Barack Obama of being a free-spending Democrat on Monday and told voters they should send a "team of mavericks" to the White House.

Riding a boost in the polls which give him a newfound edge over Obama, McCain told voters that he, and not his Democratic rivals, were the real agents of change who would shake up a free-spending Washington.

"We're going to work for you and we're going to drain the swamp in Washington, DC," McCain told a rally in Lee's Summit, Missouri.

"We'll take them on and we'll defeat 'em because America knows it's time for change and it's time for the right change."

Senator McCain praised running mate Sarah Palin's history of fighting corruption in her own party and "pork-barrel" spending while governor of Alaska, and touted his own reputation of bucking the party line.

As they fight to the November 4 election, McCain is wrestling for Obama's mantle of change amid a troubled economy and deep electoral dissatisfaction with the government.

The tactic appears to be working. McCain pulled ahead of Obama in two polls released Monday and closed the gap to a tie in another, all just in the wake of the Republican party's nominating convention, which closed Thursday.

The USA Today/Gallup survey showed McCain ahead by 50 to 46 percent among registered voters, a turnaround from one week ago when, just after the Democratic National Convention, Obama had a seven-point lead.

One factor in the shift was McCain's surprise choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate.

Twenty-nine percent of respondents said the choice of Palin had made them more likely to vote for McCain, while 21 percent said they were now less likely to back the Republicans.

Polls by CNN and Rasmussen had McCain essentially tied with Obama, after McCain trailed by as much as nine points last week.

"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

In a campaign increasingly focused on wasteful spending of tax money, McCain accused Senator Obama of massive use of "earmarks" - additions to federal legislation which direct spending to a politician's pet projects, often called "pork-barrel" spending.

"Senator Obama asked for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark spending - 932 million dollars, almost a million dollars for every day he was in the United States Senate," McCain told the Missouri rally.

"I will veto every pork barrel earmark spending bill that comes across my desk. We will stop it, my friends, because it breeds corruption and we can no longer stand for that," said McCain.

On the campaign trail in Flint, Michigan Monday, Obama questioned the "maverick" credentials of the McCain-Palin team, pointing out that as a mayor and then governor in Alaska Palin aggressively sought earmarks from Congress.

"And when John McCain with a straight face says 'I'm going to change things,' at the same time as he says he's agreed with (President) George Bush 90 percent of the time, you know it's pretty hard to believe."

Obama said that Palin, as Alaska's governor, had supported a hugely expensive bridge project funded by a congressional earmark before it sparked an outcry as an example of wasteful "pork-barrel" spending.

"You can't just make stuff up, you can't just reinvent yourself," he said.

"The American people aren't stupid. What they're looking for is someone who's been consistently calling for change" on Iraq, tax cuts, making college costs affordable, on healthcare and ethics reform.

"That's change you can believe in, that's why I'm running for president," Obama said to loud applause.