Good morning,

Last night, in Senator Obama’s infomercial, he made mention in his prepared remarks that “much of what’s wrong with America goes back much further than” the last eight years.

To the American people, I say this is a very telling statement and is where these two campaigns radically differ. Senator Obama’s campaign seems more and more to be a campaign always looking backward for an opportunity to criticize America. My campaign, on the other hand, has tried to be a campaign which looks forward, girded by the American ideals of optimism, courage and strength — ideals which I have cherished my whole life and for which I have served all of you for more than 45 years.

To Senator Obama, you say something’s wrong with America. No, Senator, — there is nothing wrong with America. There is something wrong with leadership in America, which seeks not to empower Americans, but to burden them in difficult times; which seeks to prosper individually while families’ life-long investments and plans suffer; which seeks to tax ordinary Americans and discourage their innovation all in the name of growing the size of an ineffective federal bureaucracy; and which seeks to blame America first at a time of war for being attacked by people whose twisted ideology seeks to destroy our way of life.

Make no mistake Senator Obama, there is nothing wrong with America.

For more than 230 years, America has been the land of the free and the home of the brave. Has America made its mistakes in that 230 years? You bet, both at home and abroad — but, contrary to what you suggest, there is nothing fundamentally wrong about America. Leaders who think that there is are out of touch with the America I know and the American people I want to lead.

There is nothing about America today and the difficulties we face — that hasn’t been faced before, that hasn’t been defeated before — with grit, determination and resolve to strengthen the American economy, to defeat those enemies that would harm us, to stand tall as a leader amongst nations, America will remain as the beacon of hope to the millions who migrate to its shores and to its friends and allies around the world.

Senator Obama, the American ideal is bigger than either you or I can possibly articulate. It is and has been the catalyst for positive and democratic change in our world since its birth as a nation.

America is not fundamentally wrong, Senator Obama — America is great.

From Washington and Jefferson to Lincoln and Roosevelt to Reagan – this country has been led by men and women who understood this basic premise — that America’s best days are yet ahead.

To Senator Obama and your campaign, I close by saying I respectfully disagree with you and state again that nothing is fundamentally wrong with America. What’s wrong is telling us there is.

To the American people I close by saying, I am John McCain and I want to be your next President — not because I want to fix America or change the American ideal, but because I want to lead the country I love, the greatest country on earth. May God bless you all and may God bless the United States of America.

Thank you.