Republican delegates arrive in St. Paul this week with a fresh new face on their ticket and an enormous challenge before them: To discredit the myths that swirled around Denver’s mountain air for the past seven days.

Among those falsehoods proclaimed from the Democratic convention stage - that McCain’s first term as president would be a de facto third term for President Bush. Democrats like to paper over the differences between the two but McCain didn’t come by his maverick nickname by chance. Even Bill Clinton praised McCain for his “independence” from right-wing orthodoxy on some issues.