ST. PAUL, MINN. - John McCain vowed Thursday night to vanquish the "constant partisan rancor" that grips Washington as he launched his fall campaign for the White House.

"Change is coming," he promised the roaring Republican National Convention and a prime-time television audience.

"Fight with me. Fight with me. Fight with me. Fight for what's right for our country," he said in a convention crescendo.

To repeated cheers from his delegates, McCain criticized fellow Republicans as well as Democratic rival Barack Obama as he reached out to independents and disaffected Democrats.

"We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us," he said of the Republicans who controlled Congress for most of the past 15 years.

As for Obama, he said, "I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it."

Before McCain's speech, the climax of the final night of the party convention, delegates awarded the vice presidential nomination to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the first female ticketmate in Republican history.

"She stands up for what's right and she doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down," McCain said of the woman who has faced intense scrutiny in the week since she was picked.

"And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming," McCain declared.

McCain, at 72 bidding to become the oldest first-term president, drew a roar from the convention crowd when he walked out onto the stage lighted by a single spotlight.

He was introduced by a video that dwelt heavily on his time spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and as a member of Congress, hailed for a "faithful unyielding love for America, country first."

"USA, USA, USA," chanted the crowd in the hall.

Getting down to work

McCain 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 set about it methodically.

"After we've won, we're going to reach out our hand to any willing patriot, make this government start working for you again," he said, and he pledged to invite Democrats and independents to serve in his administration.

He mentioned President Bush only in passing, as the leader who led the country through the days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

And there was plenty for conservative Republicans to cheer -- from his pledge to free the country from the grip of its dependence on foreign oil, to a vow to have schools answer to parents and students rather than "unions and entrenched bureaucrats."

A man who has clashed repeatedly with Republicans in Congress, he said proudly, "I've been called a maverick. Sometimes it's meant as a compliment and sometimes it's not. What it really means is I understand who I work for.

"I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you."

McCain 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."

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 for the White House. Democrats held their own convention last week in Denver, nominating Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as running mate for Obama, whose own acceptance speech drew an estimated 84,000 partisans to an outdoor football stadium.

He and 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.

The polls indicate a close race between McCain and Obama, at 47 a generation younger than his Republican opponent, with the outcome likely to be decided in scattered swing states in the industrial Midwest and the Southwest.

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.

Before he spoke Thursday night, Cindy McCain recommended her husband to the crowd -- and the nation. "If Americans want straight talk and the plain truth they should take a good close look at John McCain, a man tested and true who's never wavered in his devotion to our country," she said.

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