Despite an intense effort to distance himself from the way his party has done business in Washington, Senator John McCain is seen by voters as far less likely to bring change to Washington than Senator Barack Obama. He is widely viewed as a “typical Republican” who would continue or expand President Bush’s policies.

Once Barack Obama had chosen Joe Biden as his running mate, the Republican Party realised that he had left a hole in electoral support that Sarah Palin could drive a truck through. In barely a week, John McCain has received a ten point bounce in the polls. Today’s Gallup poll has McCain four points ahead of Obama.

A man remembers getting broken: that’s why Senator McCain fought the use of torture by the Bush administration. His condoning of Gov. Palin’s mocking of legal rights is appalling. Foreign policy be damned if you can score a God-fearing macho-versus-liberal constitutionalist point.

Senator McCain argues that he will magically morph into a powerful change agent. But in his 26 years in Washington, McCain was better at lecturing about reform than leading a reform movement. Republican corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did McCain’s cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of President Bush.

This week saw big problems emerge for the Labor Party in New South Wales and Western Australia, while federally the Nationals shrank even further with the loss of Lyne. In the Senate, Steve Fielding voted down the luxury car tax increase, while in the United States, Sarah Palin has garnered an immediate and positive reaction.

The first day of campaigning after the conventions suggested the contours of the two months ahead: the Obama campaign will use the deteriorating economy to try to link Senator McCain to President Bush’s economic policies, and Gov. Palin will be deployed to rally the Republican base as the main weapon against Senator Obama.

Sarah Palin this week sucked away some of the media oxygen that helped carry Senator Obama, 47, to the top of the Democratic Party. A CBS poll yesterday indicated that Senator McCain and Senator Obama were now tied at 42 per cent each. The McCain-Palin ticket erased an eight-point deficit in the past week.

It would be easy to be confused about which national convention was really the gathering of the opposition. As Senator John McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president, he and his supporters sounded the call of insurgents seeking to topple the establishment, even though their party heads the establishment.

With his speech, Senator McCain laid out the broad outlines of his general election campaign. He sought to move from a convention marked by an intense effort to reassure the party base to an appeal to a broader general election audience that polling suggests has turned sharply on Republicans and President Bush.

The difficulty for the Republicans in talking about change and reform and acting like insurgents is that they have been running Washington — the White House and Congress — for most of the last eight years. As hard as he tries, Senator McCain cannot escape the burdensome shadow of President Bush because his policies offer no real change.