en if he chooses to deny mine. My differences with him are not personal； they are with the policies he has proposed in this campaign.

Because while John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past， such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign.

It s not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush ninety？five percent of the time， as he did in the Senate last year.

It s not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well？paying jobs， or insure our workers， or help Americans afford the skyrocketing cost of college policies that have lowered the real incomes of the average American family， widened the gap between Wall Street and Main Street， and left our children with a mountain of debt.

And it s not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq， while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn t making the American people any safer.

So I ll say this there are many words to describe John McCain s attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush s policies as bipartisan and new. But change is not one of them.

Change is a foreign policy that doesn t begin and end with a war that should ve never been authorized and never been waged. I won t stand here and pretend that there are many good options