McCain and Palin campaign together to ride bounce in poll
Gallup poll shows John McCain and Sarah Palin 4 points ahead of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Democrats try to counter Palin's surprise popularity by sending Hillary Clinton on campaign trail.
WASHINGTON - An energized Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin campaigned in Missouri today as a USA Today/Gallup poll showed they got a bounce coming out of their convention and are leading the Barack Obama-Joe Biden ticket by 4 points.
Democrats, responding to McCain's surprise pick of Palin, sent Hillary Rodham Clinton to Florida today for the second time in as many weeks to campaign for Obama.
With some Clinton supporters still angry that Obama did not select the New York senator as his running mate, aides said that Obama will lunch Thursday in Harlem with former president Bill Clinton while he is in New York to mark the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
Palin, at 44 the youngest and first female governor in Alaska's history, was originally to begin campaigning on her own this week. But she's proving a draw on the campaign trail so the 72-year-old McCain decided to keep her at his side as they stump in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Palin's ability to motivate the Republican base also prompted Zondervan, the Christian book publisher owned by HarperCollins, to rush out a biography on the governor that will "explore themes from her career in politics, her life as a hockey mom, and her strongly held Christian faith," the publisher announced today. The book will be published Oct. 10.
Also today, the McCain campaign rolled out a new television ad called the "original mavericks" that emphasizes McCain's fight against earmark spending and Palin's rejection of the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere." During her 2006 campaign for governor Palin had said she would support the project but changed her mind once in office.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in Rome at the end of a trip that took him overseas during the Republican National Convention, said he watched Palin's speech from Baku, Azerbaijan, and called it "superb."
Asked if Palin has the experience to be vice president, Cheney told reporters that the country has experienced "all kinds of vice presidents over the years" and that each brings a different set of talents to the job. "Each administration is different," he said. "There is no reason why Sarah Palin can't be a successful vice president in a McCain administration."
