He implored his audience to stand up, to stand with him. So they rose to their feet, applauding and enraptured, in a Sacramento storefront festooned with miniature flags and stars dangling from ceiling tiles.
They chanted "USA, USA," some pumping fists into the air, a cardboard cutout of John McCain looking on.
For about an hour Thursday night, the small band of loyalists applauded, sometimes hooted and chuckled, during a viewing party of the Republican National Convention.
They arrived, about 50 members strong, at McCain's Sacramento County headquarters to hear not oratory, they said, but a message spoken plainly and directly by the Arizona senator and the man whom they would like to call president.
"He's not an exciting speaker – he doesn't have to be. He just needs to be straightforward," said Richard Boyd, who described himself as an independent voter and whose T-shirt described him as a Navy veteran.
"He might not be as exciting as Sarah Palin," said Boyd, referring to the Alaska governor picked by McCain to be his running mate. "You have to remember she's going to be the vice president. He'll be our leader."
He'll be commander in chief, too, noted Edgar Calderon, whose son, he said, enlisted in the Air Force on Sept. 11, 2001 – his 18th birthday and the day terrorists forever changed the country.
He said his son, Jeff, an airman stationed in Italy, will be deployed in the fall for a tour of duty in Iraq.
McCain "won't leave my son stranded," said Calderon, 52, of Elk Grove, who chairs the county's Latino Coalition for McCain and who was clearly on board what McCain bills as the "Straight Talk Express."
"The guy is real, and I know where his heart is," said Calderon. "His heart, it's in the truth. This is a person who puts country first. He's fought against some in his own party for immigrant rights, for more transparency in government. For me, I trust this guy is going to do what he says he's going to do."
When McCain told his audience that he won't let them down, they applauded – in the cavernous convention hall in Minnesota and in the modest Sacramento storefront midway between Sam's Club and See's Candies.
Thursday's viewing was far more modest than the party last week attended by hundreds of capital-area Democrats who watched and listened as Sen. Barack Obama accepted his party's nomination for president.
"Let there be no doubt, my friends, we're going to win this election," McCain said. The applause thundered across in Sacramento.
"I was pretty impressed," said Diane Schachterle, 51, of Carmichael. "I think he showed us his vulnerabilities.
"I don't understand why everybody says he's not a good speaker. Sure, he's not a great orator, but he spoke well," she said.
"To me, he seemed very real."
Some said they were caught off guard by McCain's pick for vice president.
"Whenever you try to do good in public life, you're always going to get criticism," said Boyd, who said he spent two decades in the Navy before leaving the military in May.
"She'll know how to handle herself," he said of Palin. "She led the Alaska National Guard, and Russia's right there.
"I just don't want Senator Obama" in the White House, said Boyd. "Sure, he talks great."
Call The Bee's Bobby Caina Calvan, (916) 321-1067.
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