Historic, by acclamation

DENVER - Sen. Barack Obama became the Democratic presidential nominee yesterday, making history as the first African American to head a major party ticket and climbing to within a step of the White House less than four years after he left the Illinois legislature.

The vote was unanimous after defeated rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton waded onto the packed convention floor at the Pepsi Center and stopped the formal roll call of the states. She asked that the convention declare Obama the nominee by acclamation, "in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory."

After their long and bitter primary, it was an electric moment, greeted by dancing, screaming and high-fiving in the crowd. As a band played "Love Train," the delegates chanted, "Yes we can!"

Obama topped the scene later himself, bounding onto the stage to loud cheers at the night's conclusion to embrace Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., his vice presidential nominee, and urging the delegates to help him "take back America" this fall.

The division and drama of the first two days of the convention seemed to disappear midevening as former President Bill Clinton told the crowd that Obama "is ready to be president of the United States," a declaration he has resisted making in the past.

Clinton, who was greeted by a long ovation and chants of "Bill, Bill," said it was vital to elect Obama president because "the American dream is under siege at home, and America's leadership in the world has been weakened."

Later, Biden, taking the fight to the opposition, declared in his acceptance speech that Republican Sen. John McCain's judgment had proved wrong on the Iraq war and other great foreign policy questions.

"These times require more than a good soldier; they require a wise leader, a leader who can deliver change," Biden said.

The Delaware senator described McCain as a friend of three decades, but said, "I profoundly disagree with the direction that John wants to take the country."

At one point, invoking President Bush, Biden mistakenly said "George" instead of "John" in a reference to McCain. A "Freudian slip," he said, correcting himself.

Biden was chosen as Obama's running mate in large measure for his foreign policy experience, but also because of his working-class background rooted in Scranton. Obama had difficulty attracting the votes of blue-collar whites in the primaries.

As Biden began his remarks last night, he saluted his elderly mother, who was in the audience, for the values she had taught him. "My mother's creed is the American creed: No one is better than you," he said. "You are everyone's equal, and everyone is equal to you."

Many of last night's party speakers joined in targeting what polls have shown is McCain's biggest strength with the electorate - his foreign policy experience - and sought to paint McCain as belligerent and trigger-happy.

"Together, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John McCain brought more than a century of experience to our foreign policy challenges," former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said. "And what did that get us? One international debacle after another."

"We deserve better than John McCain's jokes about bombing Iran or his denials that Iraq has distracted us from Afghanistan," Daschle said.

Rep. Patrick Murphy of Bucks County, the only Iraq war veteran in Congress, said the Bush administration had betrayed the young men and women whom it sent to war.

"When I returned from Iraq, I realized - we didn't just need change over there, we also needed to change how we treat our veterans here at home," Murphy said. "For eight long years, we've had a president who rushed to stand with soldiers at political rallies, but abandoned them at Walter Reed. We've had a president who spent billions on private contractors, but not on body armor for all our troops."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the United States would continue to be at the mercy of "Third World thugs" unless it achieves independence from imported oil through conservation and development of alternative energy sources.

"For the past eight years, the man in the Oval Office has tipped his hat over his eyes, kicked back his chair and snoozed at his desk . . . while his vice president conspired with oil industry cronies," Reid said. McCain, who stresses drilling for more oil domestically, is no better, he said.

In a taped interview for a Las Vegas cable TV program, Reid was harsher, saying that McCain "doesn't have the temperament to be president" and has "abused everyone he's ever dealt with."

The convention designed to celebrate Obama had been dominated in its first two days by the drama surrounding the Clintons and whether they would help unite the party behind the freshman Illinois senator who blocked their restoration to the White House.

On Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton declared she would do all she could to elect Obama - her husband added last night, "That makes two of us" - and said Democrats must unite to fight for their principles.

Earlier yesterday, the New York senator told her delegates at an emotional reception that they were free to vote for Obama during the roll call, but she did not urge them to do so.

"I am not telling you what to do," she said. "You've come here from so many different places having made this journey and feeling in your heart what is right for you to do."

The campaign was a "joy," she said. "Yes, we didn't make it. But, boy, did we have a good time."

Obama, 47, was born in Hawaii, the son of a white mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya whom he barely knew. He was elected to the Illinois state Senate in 1996, failed in a run for Congress four years later, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, the same year he made an electrifying keynote address at the Democratic convention in Boston.

Tonight, Obama will accept the nomination before 80,000 people at Invesco Field at Mile High, a football stadium, 45 years to the day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech during the 1963 civil-rights march on Washington.

Republicans mocked the elaborate stage, with neoclassical columns, as a Greek temple suitable to what they called Obama's high self-regard and "celebrity."

When the convention ends, Obama and Biden and their wives, Michelle and Jill, will depart for the beginning of a battleground-state bus tour tomorrow in Beaver, Pa. They are scheduled to continue to Ohio and Michigan, pounding McCain on the economy in advance of next week's Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn.