Neck and neck again in race for White House

JOHN McCain is again level in the polls with his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, whose eight-point lead last weekend has evaporated.

A CBS poll yesterday put support for both candidates in the race to the White House at 42 per cent. The poll was conducted before Mr McCain's speech to his party convention, and appears to show that the clear lead shown last weekend after Mr Obama wooed the Democratic party faithful at the Denver convention has vanished, with the "not sures" now dominating.

When the conventions started, polls found voters split 47-47 per cent between the candidates. After two weeks of wall-to-wall publicity, support is still evenly split, but now at 42-42 per cent, with a whopping 16 per cent of voters wondering whether either man can get to grips with the country bogged down in a faraway war and teetering on the edge of recession.

"He's no Sarah Palin," was the consensus among Republicans streaming out of their party's convention after Mr McCain's underwhelming speech.

On Thursday, Mrs Palin, who was a surprise choice for the vice-presidential nomination, wowed the convention with a blistering speech in which she described herself as "a pitbull" .

And, in a move that is likely to further bolster her appeal with the right, it emerged last night that Mrs Palin's oldest son, Track, 19, is to serve in Iraq. Beau Biden, the son of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden, is also set to serve in the country.

Traditionally, convention speeches let US presidential candidates make a pitch to the nation, but Mr McCain's efforts seemed rambling and incoherent.

He based his appeal on his time as a fighter pilot and prisoner of war in North Vietnam, telling voters: "I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's."

As a result, he said, his would be a non-ideological presidency aimed at problem-solving. "Again and again I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems," he said. "That's how I will govern as president."

But that failed to give voters a clear idea of where he stands on any of the key issues. "McCain took a scattershot approach that had me looking for themes," moaned Michael Goodwin, a New York Daily News columnist. "I didn't find any."

The 72-year-old senator also promised that he would clean up a rotten political establishment, saying: "Let me offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me-first-country-second Washington crowd: change is coming."

Mr McCain's main problem is that, after 26 years in the Senate, he is part of that establishment, currently run by a Republican president.

Mr McCain has found himself boxed in by the contradictions that threaten to wreck his campaign. First, he has to position himself as different from George Bush, the most unpopular president in recent times, but not lose core Republican support. Second, he has to appeal to the right wing and the centrist swing voters in the party.

Republican conservatives demanded, as the price of their support, that Mr McCain back them in opposing abortion, in demanding a round-up of illegal immigrants and in promising that creationist biology will be taught in schools.

But Mr McCain dare not mention these policies for fear of alienating the swing voters, so none was mentioned in his 50-minute speech. The few policies he felt able to articulate included promises to give parents "choice" in their children's schooling and support for a dramatic energy programme to expand oil drilling in the United States and invest in nuclear power.