On the night of the final primary contests for the 2008 election season, John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, delivered the first of three important political addresses: a pugnacious, poorly-delivered speech. Kicking off his General Election campaign from a podium in New Orleans, Louisiana, McCain spoke shortly before the polls closed in South Dakota and Montana. (video; text) The awful green background was decorated by a new campaign theme, “A Leader You Can Believe In.” The last slogan they announced was “The Change You Deserve,” which was found to be a registered trademark for the anti-depressant drug, Effexor. Both slogans seem to be a reaction to Barack Obama, rather than any attempt for McCain to take the offensive and develop a message or theme of his own.

The “prebuttal” (as characterized by Josh Marshall) sounds better on paper than it did as delivered last night. In it, McCain used the word “change” 33 times, according to MSNBC this morning. He embraced Hillary Clinton, distanced himself from the Bush administration and the Republican Party, and dismissed Barack Obama as a dishonorable, untrustworthy, lying protectionist who is in the pocket of special interests. McCain repeatedly punctuated his characterizations of Obama’s positions, with: “And that’s not change we can believe in.” For example,

No problem is more urgent today than America’s dependence on foreign oil. It threatens our security, our economy and our environment. The next President must be willing to break completely with the energy policies not just of the Bush Administration, but the administrations that preceded his, and lead a great national campaign to put us on a course to energy independence. We must unleash the creativity and genius of Americans, and encourage industries to pursue alternative, non-polluting and renewable energy sources, where demand will never exceed supply.

Senator Obama voted for the same policies that created the problem. In fact, he voted for the energy bill promoted by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, which gave even more breaks to the oil industry. I opposed it because I know we won’t achieve energy independence by repeating the mistakes of the last half century. That’s not change we can believe in.

(Does anyone see any danger here in McCain starting off by attacking Obama for a Senate vote, not to mention the Repub attacking the Dem for voting for a Repub bill?? McCain won’t help himself with his “base” with this position, and he has 22 years of Senate votes for Dems to examine!)

McCain seems to be trying to recapture the magic of the early part of his 2000 presidential campaign. But a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, and he has changed quite a few of his “maverick” positions (sometimes more than once) to please various constituencies. Now, as he pivots to the center for the general election (without having first solidified support on his right flank), he needs to do a better job of defining a positive agenda. Hopefully, he will improve as a candidate or I’m afraid the next five months will drive us political junkies into permanent madness.

Web pundits generally agreed this morning that the speech was a flop. See, for example: Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin at the Corner, Jon Swift and Jazz Shaw at The Moderate Voice.