Anyone remember columnist Art Buchwald? He had a Thanksgiving column that has been published ever since November 1953. In it he tries to explain the American holiday to the French (trouble if you ask me). Today I’m going to pull a Buchwald and re-post a pride column that was written last year when we were Visiblevote. Drop by during the week-end because there will be a few more Pride articles. Lastly, RIP Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.

Around this time last year, I was waiting by the phone for fame and fortune to call. Genre’s pride issue was out and I was in it (not on the cover silly!). My long essay against the term “LGBT” had made the middle pages and I was convinced everyone would want to talk to this new voice in gay political writing (let a brother dream people; let a brother dream). The gist of the article was this: 1) the term LGBT  is ugly. It doesn’t roll of the tongue and it’s hard to imagine any poet of substance using it artfully, and 2) LGBT washes out our differences.

“Granted, LGBT is more ‘big tent’–friendly, but it’s never going win pretty points. Its lack of beauty (can you imagine Auden using it in a poem?) has everything to do with what it does. It corrals us all—from the white lesbian couple living in the outback of Montana to the Asian bisexual kid walking down Christopher Street—into the same corner. Outside of sexuality, there is nothing that connects the distinct worlds found under the LGBT sign.”

My solution? Instead of yammering about some mythical LGBT community or marching in a gay pride parade let’s admit we are queers but also members of other tribes that are just as important in our person-hood. This doesn’t mean we leave aside the push for gay rights, but an acceptance that sexuality, such as it is, is not necessarily a place to start a political movement.

The issue came and went with nary a peep. No party invites. No book deals. Nothing. Oh well. That’s okay. I’m not good at parties anyway.

This week-end is Gay Pride and while the article fell flat I still think it says something important. However, there is one thing I would add. While it’s easy for guys like me to talk about how gay pride parades  and clunky  terms have outgrown us, there are folks behind me, youngsters, who take those terms very seriously. If I could, I would add this story to that Genre article : the Monday after Pride last year, I’m in my local bakery paying for coffee. The guy behind the counter knows me because I’m a regular. His skin glows a dull red and he looks like it’s been a few days since he had a good night sleep.

“So James did you do Pride yesterday,” he asks as he hands me coffee.

I reply no. Make some lame joke about not liking parades.

“I went. It was my first New York City Pride parade. I marched with a religious group.”

The way he’s telling the story, its clear he’s excited. Yes he’ serving coffee to some bitter queen on a Monday morning, sure he should have used a bit more sun screen, but for one day who he was, a gay young man with a religious background, did not have to be explained. His identity didn’t have to be fought or argued over and he could walk with others just like him. There is something refreshing in that and that came through in his telling of his march.

Gay pride, like LGBT, is not perfect and I’ll spend the week-end listening to my Billy Strayhorn albums instead of doing anything prideful. Yet  when I think of that young man, my criticisms  seem silly and old. Happy Gay Pride peoples.

Lesbian and Gay Rights – Everything But Marriage:

Biden voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, but has been quoted as saying “I don’t know why we should be frightened of [same-sex marriage].” Although he sees same-sex marriage as a likely inevitability, he has not taken the step of actually supporting it. Instead, he supports a civil unions policy that would grant the same legal rights. He also supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), federal hate crime legislation that includes sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories, and the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Obama announced the pick on his Web site with a photo of the two men and an appeal for donations. A text message went out shortly afterward that said, “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee.”

Biden, 65, has twice sought the White House, and is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.

Across more than 30 years in the Senate, he has served at various times not only as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee but also as head of the Judiciary Committee, with its jurisdiction over anti-crime legislation, Supreme Court nominees and Constitutional issues.

In selecting Biden, Obama passed over several other potential running mates, none more prominent than former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, his tenacious rival in dozens of primaries and caucuses.

Obama’s campaign arranged a debut for the newly minted ticket on Saturday outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill.

Obama’s decision leaked to the media several hours before his aides planned to send a text message announcing the running mate, negating a promise that people who turned over their phone numbers would be the first to know who Obama had chosen. The campaign scrambled to send the text message after the leak, sending phones buzzing at the inconvenient time of just after 3 a.m. on the East coast.

Hundreds of miles to the west, carpenters, electricians, sound stage gurus and others transformed the Pepsi Center in Denver into a made-for-television convention venue.

Tucked away in one corner were thousands of lightweight rolled cardboard tubes, ready-made handles for signs bearing the names of the Democratic ticket – once the identity of Obama’s running mate was known.

While Obama decided against adding Clinton to his ticket, he has gone to great lengths to gain the confidence of her primary voters, agreeing to allow her name to be placed in nomination at the convention and permitting a roll call vote that threatens to expose lingering divisions within the party.

Biden slowly emerged as Obama’s choice across a long day and night of political suspense as other contenders gradually fell away.

First Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine let it be known that he had been ruled out. Then came word that Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana had also been passed over.

Several aides to Clinton said the Obama campaign had never requested financial or other records from her.

Other finalists in the veep sweepstakes were Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Texas Rep. Chet Edwards.

Among those on the short list, Biden brought the most experience in defense or foreign policy – areas in which Obama fares relatively poorly in the polls compared with Republican Sen. John McCain.

While the war in Iraq has been supplanted as the campaign’s top issues by the economy in recent months, the recent Russian invasion of Georgia has returned foreign policy to the forefront.

In addition to foreign policy experience, Biden, a native of Scranton, Pa., has working-class roots that could benefit Obama, who lost the blue-collar vote to Clinton during their competition for the presidential nomination.

Biden was elected to the Senate at the age of 29 in 1972, but personal tragedy struck before he could take office. His wife and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed when a tractor-trailer broad-sided her station wagon.

Biden took his oath of office for his first term at the hospital bedside of one of his sons.

On Friday, he spent the day at his home in Delaware with friends and family. The normally loquacious lawmaker maintained a low profile as associates said they believed – but did not know – he would be tapped. They added they had been asked to stand by in case their help was needed.

No sooner had word spread of his selection than McCain’s campaign unleashed its first attack. Spokesman Ben Porritt said in a statement that Biden had “denounced Barack Obama’s poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing – that Barack Obama is not ready to be president.”

As evidence, Republicans cited an ABC interview from August 2007, in which Biden said he would stand by an earlier statement that Obama was not ready to serve as president.

Biden is seeking a new Senate term in the fall. there was no immediate word whether he intended to change plans as he reaches for national office.

Michael Silberman, a partner at online communications firm EchoDitto, said the campaign gambled when they made such a high-stakes promise and find themselves in a precarious situation where they could risk a great deal of trust with supporters.

“For Obama supporters, this is like finding out from your neighbor instead of your sister that she’s engaged – not how you want or expect the news to be delivered,” Silberman said.

Biden dropped out of the 2008 race for the Democratic presidential nomination after a poor finish in the Iowa caucuses, but not before he talked dismissively of joining someone else’s ticket.

“I am not running for vice president,” he said in a Fox interview. “I would not accept it if anyone offered it to me. The fact of the matter is I’d rather stay as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee than be vice president.”

He had stumbled on his first day in the race, apologizing for having described Obama as “clean.” Months later, Obama spoke up on Biden’s defense, praising him during a campaign debate for having worked for racial equality.

It was Biden’s second try for the White House. The first ended badly in 1988 when he was caught lifting lines from a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.

In the decades since, he become a power in the Senate, presiding over confirmation proceedings for Supreme Court nominees as well as convening hearings to criticize President Bush’s handling of the Iraq War.

Biden voted to authorize the war, but long ago became one of the Senate’s surest critics of the conflict. Ironically, perhaps, his son, Beau, attorney general of Delaware, is due to spend a tour of duty in Iraq beginning this fall with his National Guard unit.

Obama worked to keep his choice secret, although he addressed the issue broadly during the day in an interview.

“Obviously, the most important question is: Is this person ready to be president?” Obama told “The Early Show” on CBS. Second, he said, was: “Can this person help me govern? Are they going to be an effective partner in creating the kind of economic opportunity here at home and guiding us through some dangerous waters internationally?”

And, he added: “I want somebody who is going to be able to challenge my thinking and not simply be a yes person when it comes to policymaking.

A Zogby Poll found that more than six in 10 U.S. voters say they could support an openly gay candidate for president of the United States.

The poll, conducted for the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute, asked 1,089 likely voters if they would support an openly gay president, U.S. senator, vice president or cabinet-level secretary if they believed the individual was the most qualified person for the job.

Sixty-five percent of survey participants indicated that they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree they could support the presidential candidate.

Seventy-one percent of respondents said they would support the appointment of an openly gay cabinet-level secretary.

“These results prove that most Americans want to be fair to gay people,” said Chuck Wolfe, president of the Leadership Institute.

“Our aspiration is to always see each other as individuals first, and though we may not always succeed at that, our underlying fairness and decency means that one day soon we will. This marks tremendous progress for our community and for the voting public,” Wolfe said.

The Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute ensures that openly LGBT public leaders are equipped with the skills they need to make a difference.  Its nonpartisan training and executive development programs and networking opportunities are utilized by hundreds of elected, appointed, community and non-profit leaders each year.

Earlier this year the Institute, along with a coalition of partners, launched the Presidential Appointments Project earlier this year to serve as a talent bank for openly LGBT professionals seeking appointed positions in the next presidential administration.

The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which helps fund the campaigns of LGBT candidates has endorsed 67 candidates so far for November’s election.

Earlier this week, a Harris Poll found that among LGBT registered voters Democrat Barack Obama has a clear lead – with 68 percent favoring the Illinois Senator.

Ten percent of those surveyed support McCain, while three percent favor Ralph Nader and one percent supports Bob Barr. Three percent chose “other.” Fifteen percent of all LGBT voters still are not sure which candidate to support.

Fifty percent of conservatives think churches and other places of worship should stay out of social and political matters, up from 30 percent four years ago, according to a survey released Thursday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

That significant shift in conservative thought has brought the country to a tipping point on the question: a slim majority of Americans – 52 percent – now think churches should keep out of politics.

That’s an eight percentage point increase over 2004 and the first time a majority of Americans has held that opinion since Pew officials started asking the question 12 years ago.

On this question, the gap between conservatives and liberals is narrowing: just four years ago, liberals were twice as likely as conservatives to say churches should stay out of politics. Now, 50 percent of conservatives and 57 percent of liberals think that. Four years ago, 62 percent of liberals opposed church involvement in politics. Democrats and Republicans are about even on the question, as well.

The survey also found largely unchanged attitudes along religious lines on the presidential choices compared with 2004, despite Democrat Barack Obama’s strong play for religious voters and Republican John McCain’s hesitancy to talk about his own faith and problems connecting with his party’s evangelical base.

McCain leads Obama 68 percent to 24 percent among white evangelical Protestants, comparable to what President Bush was polling four years ago. But the support is tepid: just 28 percent of white evangelicals call themselves “strong” supporters of McCain, well short of Bush’s 57 percent in 2004.

Changing attitudes about mixing church and politics could emerge as a factor in the fall campaign – particularly for McCain. Both campaigns are plotting get-out-the-vote efforts in faith communities, but past Republican successes came when attitudes were more welcoming.

The attitude shift cut across conservative constituencies: 46 percent of Republican Protestants want churches out of politics, up from 28 percent in 2004. Thirty-six percent of white evangelical Republicans hold that view, up from 20 percent four years ago.

The question asked specifically about places of worship, which by law cannot take stands for or against candidates or political parties but may speak out on issues. So the public might hold different views about political stances taken by religious leaders speaking as individuals or religious advocacy groups.

The findings come after midterm elections in 2006 that saw Democrats seize control of Congress, a landmark court ruling this year legalizing gay marriage in California, and also amid an identity crisis among conservative evangelicals about which issues should take priority and who speaks for the movement.

Among the groups that shifted strongly away from wanting to see churches involved in politics: Americans who are less educated, those who believe gay marriage is a very important issue and those who think the two major parties are unfriendly to religion.

“To my mind, that spells frustration,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. “But by the same token, we know these very same people are not interested in less religiosity in the political discourse. They almost universally want a religious person as president.

“It’s not that they want to take religion out of politics, it’s that their frustrations with the way things seem to be going are leading them to say, ‘Well, maybe churches should back off on this.’”

The survey confirmed that white non-Hispanic Catholics, who make up about 18 percent of the electorate, are shaping up to be a big swing vote this fall: 45 percent support McCain, while 44 percent back Obama. Democrat John Kerry, a Catholic, was doing better at this juncture in 2004, winning 50 percent of those Catholics.

Asked which candidate “shares my values,” 47 percent of all respondents replied Obama and 39 percent said McCain. White evangelicals favor McCain on that question, the religiously nonaffiliated leaned Obama, while white non-Hispanic Catholics and mainline Protestants were split.

Democrats have made inroads in closing the so-called God gap, at least by one measure: 38 percent of respondents said the party is “friendly toward religion,” up from 26 percent two years ago. Even so, considerably more people – 52 percent – viewed the Republican Party as religion-friendly.

A second letter sent to a McCain campaign office in New Hampshire initially was reported to contain threatening language and white powder. Authorities said that was a false alarm and there was no powder in that envelope.

At least 19 people were examined at hospitals or were quarantined outside the Colorado office while authorities tried to determine whether the powder was hazardous. Everyone was sent home by late Thursday, said Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson. He said the substance was not hazardous and not lethal, but that it will take days to determine what it was.

Andy Lyon of Parker South Metro Fire Rescue Authority said the return address on the envelope listed the Arapahoe Detention Center and the name of an inmate.

Sheriff’s officials said the inmate suspected of sending the letter is Marc Harold Ramsey, 39, who has been incarcerated since September 2007 on investigation of felony menacing, harassment and second-degree assault on a peace officer. Ramsey may face federal felony charges for Thursday’s incident, sheriff’s officials said.

Lyon said the first line of the letter used threatening language. He refused to give any details.

Malcolm Wiley, a Secret Service spokesman in Colorado, said there was no powder in the New Hampshire envelope. He said he did not know about the content of the letter, which had a Denver return address. That alarmed staffers in Manchester, who had heard about the Colorado incident.

Jim Barnett, McCain’s New England campaign manager, said it’s unusual for the New Hampshire office to get a letter from Denver.

“That was really the only suspicious thing about the letter, and our national headquarters advised, out of an abundance of caution for our staff and volunteers, that we have the authorities check it out,” he said. “We did and it was deemed safe.”

A government official familiar with the investigation said the New Hampshire letter was a false alarm. The official said authorities believe the Denver letter was a hoax because it appeared to have been sent from a jail.

Both the New Hampshire and Colorado offices were evacuated.

Bruce Williamson of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department said authorities took the incident “very seriously” because the Democratic National Convention begins Monday in Denver. McCain is the presumed GOP candidate.

The annual Stonewall Democrats’ convention kicks off today at a downtown hotel. All 350 participants are delegates to the convention.

The organization has had a key role in helping shape the Democratic Party platform – the most positive LGBT platform in memory.

It calls for passage of expanded hate crime legislation and a comprehensive employment discrimination bill while not specifically saying both pieces of legislation would directly affect LGBT people. It does, however, use the term gender identity.

The platform also calls for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the ban on LGBT people serving openly in the military, and for the first time it calls for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act used to bar gay and lesbian couples from receiving federal benefits.

The platform additionally calls for the full inclusion of same-sex couples and their families and for a national strategy to combat HIV/AIDS.

But in a nod to party conservatives, the platform carefully avoids using the specific words gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

The Stonewall convention agenda touts a “boot camp” for gay activists within the party to help them when they return home to elect pro-gay politicians.

In an indication of the group’s growing clout within the Democratic Party, several key party members will make appearances. Among them, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.

Governor Sebelius will speak at Stonewall’s dinner Saturday evening. The next morning, Governor Patrick will speak at a Sunday brunch.

Also speaking at the conference will be Judy Shepard, the mother of Matthew Shepard; openly gay political commentator Keith Boykin; and NY state assembly member Danny O’Donnell.

The LGBT representation at the Democratic National Convention this year is the highest ever. The 358 delegates represent approximately six percent of total convention attendees and is 27 percent increase from the 282 LGBT participants who attended the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004.

365gay.com editor in chief Jennifer Vanasco will reporting from the convention all next week.

The campaigns issued a joint statement Thursday.

The first will be at the University of Mississippi on September 26th. It will focus on foreign policy and national security.

Another will be a town-hall style debate on October 7th at Belmont University. The last will be on domestic and economic policy on October 15th at Hofstra University.

Vice presidential contenders will meet October 2nd at Washington University in St. Louis.

Republican John McCain hopes to upset that history.

The GOP presidential candidate is mounting strong challenges to Democratic rival Barack Obama in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and eyeing Minnesota – four states that have thwarted Republicans in at least four straight elections. The Arizona senator is also fighting to hang on to Ohio, a bellwether that President Bush won twice.

“For all the talk about changing the electoral map, the core of it is still the same – right here,” said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.

This region has been a central part of every White House race for 30-some years because Democratic presidential candidates have had to win a huge share of its electoral votes to have any hope of assembling the 270 needed to win. Together the five states where McCain sees opportunity have 78 electoral votes; Illinois’ 21 votes are considered safe for Obama, its favorite son U.S. senator.

This year McCain views the region as his best, if not his only, chance to keep a Republican in the White House in an election season that strongly favors Democrats after eight years of President Bush. All five states were decided by narrow margins four years ago.

They are home to large numbers of blue-collar whites, whom Obama has struggled to win over; senior citizens, who polls show tilt toward McCain; and Catholics, a swing-voting constituency. These groups comprise the bulk of the right-leaning suburban Democrats who were successfully courted by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and may be attracted to McCain if he can keep his distance from Bush. In addition, each state has rural conservative voters who could reject Obama’s liberal voting record and, perhaps, his race.

“McCain is looking at the nature of the electorate and has a reasonable chance to cherry-pick some voters,” said G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. “These are the kinds of voters who were reluctant to vote for Obama in the primary, and the Republicans think they can make inroads with them.”

Obama, a 47-year-old first-term senator, is seeking to become the first black U.S. president. Republicans have worked to tag him an inexperienced elitist trading on his celebrity. Race and class are certainly factors in this contest – and definitely in this region – but the impact won’t be measurable until after the election.

Obama has characterized McCain, a 71-year-old Arizonan who has supported Bush in Senate votes 90 percent of the time, as offering another term of the unpopular president’s economic and free trade policies to a region whose economy has tanked and that has seen staggering job losses.

McCain has acknowledged the economy isn’t his strongest suit. Some other factors also may work against him.

Obama calls neighboring Illinois home, and he is strongly defending four of these states while aggressively going after Ohio and looking to pick off a GOP-held target in this region, Indiana. At this point, McCain’s campaign isn’t active in that state, a sign that Republicans aren’t yet worried.

Obama should post big numbers in urban cores like Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, given his strong support among minorities and younger voters. Obama will probably benefit from union support here. And enthusiasm for his candidacy and a recruitment effort have sharply increased Democratic voter registration.

In Ohio, McCain may find it difficult to repeat Bush’s 2004 victory. The state GOP is in shambles after scandals helped Democrats claim the governor’s office in 2006.

Michigan, where the auto industry is ailing, is one of McCain’s two top targets. Obama didn’t compete there during the primary so he needed to build an organization essentially from scratch. Picking Michigan native Mitt Romney as his running mate could help McCain.

Pennsylvania is McCain’s other priority. Obama was soundly defeated by Hillary Rodham Clinton in the state’s spring primary, though the race boosted Democratic voter registration. McCain could benefit there if he puts former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge on the ticket.

Wisconsin has been closely contested in recent years and gave Democrats narrow victories of only 11,000 votes in 2004 and 5,000 votes in 2000. However, it has been trending more Democratic in the last four years.

Minnesota last voted for a Republican for president in 1972. For now at least, it’s the only one of the five states where McCain isn’t running TV ads, but that may change if the state is within reach after Labor Day.

McCain will accept the GOP presidential nomination next month at the party’s convention in St. Paul, Minn., and his prospects in the state could improve if he picks Gov. Tim Pawlenty as his No. 2.

To win all five states, McCain must offset Obama’s strong support in metropolitan centers by running well in perpetual swing-voting areas – places like Minnesota’s Anoka County, north of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The county is home to working-class voters who love to hunt and fish and don’t hesitate to back a candidate who feels right to them, regardless of party label. It was the center of wrestler Jesse Ventura’s victorious 1998 independent campaign for governor.

Republican Jim Abeler, who has represented the area in the legislature for a decade, says McCain could do well in counties like Anoka by playing up his maverick image.

“The solid Republicans are going to suck it up and vote for McCain. The solid Democrats are going to suck it up and vote for Obama,” he said. “But there are a lot of people in the middle. I think there’s hay to be made in my county.”

Tiffany Ling, 25, is among those who are torn.

“Obama strikes me as a good family man. He seems like he’d be a decent guy. But my values are more along the lines of what John McCain stands for and believes in,” Ling said as she sat in a park in Coon Rapids, Minn.

Economic stress weighs on her. Pregnant with her second child, Ling is considering selling her gas-guzzling SUV because high gasoline prices crimp the family’s budget as she travels 50 miles roundtrip to the hospital where she is a nurse.

But she doesn’t know which candidate has the best plan to revive the economy.

Mirroring the region’s troubles, the county’s unemployment rate hit its highest mark in four years this summer at 5.3 percent. That trend influences Tod O’Donoghue, 38, who recently lost his job as a floor covering salesman.

Excited about Obama, O’Donoghue describes the Democrat’s short Washington record as an asset and praises his emphasis on diplomacy in dealing with global threats.

“There’s no way in hell I’m voting for the old establishment,” O’Donoghue, said, referring to McCain. “It’s just unhealthy for us.”

“I honor his service. I don’t honor his policies. I don’t honor his politics,” Obama said, taking on his GOP opponent with renewed vigor while some Democrats fret that their candidate has not been aggressive enough.

Both candidates also unveiled fresh attack advertisements ahead of their back-to-back national conventions.

Trying anew to tie McCain to the unpopular President Bush, Obama’s TV commercial asks: “Can we really afford more of the same?” It slams McCain’s tax plan as a giveaway for big corporations and oil companies. McCain’s radio ad claims: “Celebrities like to spend their millions. Barack Obama is no different. Only it’s your money he wants to spend.”

Democrats privately and publicly are questioning whether Obama has a second act beyond his message of change and wondering whether he can throw an effective punch against a Republican Party willing to play hardball.

Obama was confronted by those concerns at a town hall meeting in Virginia Wednesday, when a woman told him McCain was running a lot of negative ads in the state.

“You think you can win by taking the higher ground? I worry about you,” the woman said, but Obama insisted he was up for the fight.

“I’m skinny but I’m tough. We will hit back with the truth,” the Illinois senator said. “We intend to win this election.”

Republicans, in turn, are emboldened by improving poll numbers: Even ardent critics of McCain’s campaign see a way he could win although Bush’s unpopularity remains a drag and war and economic distress have created a dreadful political environment for the GOP.

New national polls show McCain starting to close a summer-long Obama edge.

The Pew Research Center’s latest survey found Obama at 46 percent and McCain at 43 percent, tighter than the 8-percentage-point gap just two months ago. The survey found that McCain has solidified his base support, particularly among whites, men, Republicans and evangelicals. Conversely, Obama has made few gains, but has retained his overwhelming advantage among blacks and younger voters, while also leading among women.

After struggling to find his footing, McCain has put Obama on defense over the past few weeks.

In ads and speeches, he worked to plant the idea in voters’ minds that Obama lacked the experience and substance to be president. McCain also reversed himself to support offshore drilling amid high gas prices, and that new message has helped unite dispirited Republicans.

More recently, the Arizona senator struck a hawkish stance during Georgia-Russia conflict in the hope of turning the campaign conversation to his strength – national security. And, he delivered what was widely viewed as a strong performance last weekend before an audience of evangelicals, a Republican core constituency he has struggled to energize.

Even so, he still has found himself on the defensive at times in trying to shed his association with Bush – a link Obama and the Democrats are making at every turn. A recent AP-Yahoo poll showed that six of 10 adults say McCain will follow Bush’s policies. Thus, McCain recently launched a TV ad stressing that he knows the country’s worse off than it was four years ago and asserting: “He’s the original maverick.”

Asked by the AP about Obama’s stepped-up criticism, McCain said Wednesday: “I don’t pay that much attention to his campaign.”

Obama has been criticizing McCain for months, though he’s used humorous lines and a light touch to blunt the attacks on the campaign trail. He’s also run critical TV ads, though more spots were positive than negative compared with McCain.

Then last week, Obama started airing more hard-hitting TV and radio ads against McCain that were tailored to individual media markets. Some featured pictures of McCain and Bush, while others accuse McCain of ignoring the hardships of the working class, failing to protect jobs, and catering to oil companies.

Obama aired 10,000 spots last week, of which almost 9,000 were anti-McCain, according to Evan Tracey, who tracks political ads as head of TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group. During the same period, McCain aired virtually all anti-Obama ads; of his 13,000 spots, only 302 didn’t mention Obama.

This week, the Illinois senator returned revived from a Hawaiian vacation and stepped up his criticism of McCain – sending a message to supporters that he’s up to waging a fierce fight.

On Monday, a feisty Obama called the economy a disaster thanks to “John McCain’s president, George W. Bush” and methodically tore into McCain’s health care, tax and offshore oil drilling policies. He said McCain arrived at his new offshore drilling position “when he started looking at polling.”

A day later, Obama said McCain “doesn’t know what he’s up against,” asserted that his rival was questioning his “character and patriotism” in his Iraq war stance and challenged McCain to stop.

“I have never suggested that Sen. McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America’s national interest. Now, it’s time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.”

McCain countered Wednesday, saying: “Sen. Obama got a little testy on this issue. He said I was questioning his patriotism. Let me be clear – I am not questioning his patriotism. I am questioning his judgment.”

McCain then pressed his attack. “Washington is full of talented talkers,” McCain said. “The bottom line is that Sen. Obama’s words, for all their eloquence and passion, don’t mean all that much.”