Boston ? John Edwards praised John Kerry Wednesday night as a man tested by war for national command and promised cheering Democratic National Convention delegates that their ticket will “build one America” no longer divided by income or race.

The vice presidential candidate spoke shortly before delegates formally bestowed their nomination on Kerry, a 60-year-old Massachusetts senator locked in a close race with President Bush.

Republicans are “doing all they can to take this campaign for the highest office in the land down the lowest possible road,” Kerry’s running mate told delegates packed into the FleetCenter and a nationwide prime-time television audience.

The vice presidential candidate urged the country to reject that approach and “embrace the politics of hope, the politics of what’s possible because this is America, where everything is possible.”

Edwards’ appearance on the podium prompted the most boisterous demonstration of the convention to date. Thousands of cheering delegates held aloft identical red signs bearing his name, passed out by the boxload just before he stepped to the podium.

He evoked the themes of his campaign against Kerry in last winter’s primaries to argue the case for their new political partnership.

“The truth is, we still live in two different Americas,” said Edwards, the son of a Carolina mill worker and the first in his family to attend college.

Kerry arrives

Edwards’ turn at the podium came a few hours after Kerry campaigned his way to the convention city and into the eager embrace of his Vietnam War crewmates. A dozen fellow veterans greeted him, including Jim Rassmann, a retired Special Forces soldier whose life Kerry saved from a muddy river in the Mekong Delta while under enemy fire.

“We’re going to write the next great chapter of history in this country together,” Kerry vowed at a welcome-home rally in the city that has nourished his political career for a quarter century.

Kerry’s convention scriptwriters arranged for Ohio, a pivotal battleground state, to cast the delegate votes that formally put him over the top in a roll call of the states that lacked any suspense.

In keeping with the overwhelming security arrangements for the first national political convention since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Kerry’s ferry was escorted by Coast Guard vessels armed with machine guns as it made the brief trip across the open harbor.

Bush campaign response

Bush’s re-election campaign lost no time in criticizing Edwards.

“We saw John Kerry’s running mate tonight portray America as a nation in decline, but the American people know we are strong and overcoming the challenges of the past three years,” said spokesman Steve Schmidt. “John Kerry’s extreme makeover of adding a smile to his pessimistic rhetoric cannot change his out of the mainstream record.”

Like dozens of other speakers at the convention, Edwards’ script stressed the overriding national security theme of the convention. He recalled Kerry’s service in Vietnam a generation ago, saying he ordered his swiftboat turned around despite enemy fire and plucked a fellow American from the river to safety.

“Decisive. Strong. Is that not what we need in a commander in chief?” he asked rhetorically.

But Edwards’ speech also marked something of a pivot to other issues that have received scant attention during three nights of convention oratory.

In one of the few references of the convention to Kerry’s economic program, Edwards said it relied on tax hikes on Americans in the top 2 percent of income and offered the hope of benefits to millions.

“We can build an America where we no longer have two health care systems,” he said. “… We can build one public school system that works for all our children. … We can create good paying jobs in America again,” he added, by stopping the tax breaks that give companies an incentive to send jobs overseas.

‘Lead strong alliances’

Recalling a childhood in the segregated South, Edwards said he and Kerry want “our children and our grandchildren to be the first generations to grow up in an America that’s no longer divided by race.”

In a slap at the Bush administration, he said Kerry will “build and lead strong alliances and safeguard and secure weapons of mass destruction … We will always use our military might to keep the American people safe.”

“And we will have one clear unmistakable message for al-Qaida and the rest of these terrorists. You can run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you.”

Elizabeth Edwards introduced her husband to the delegates. “The most optimistic man I know,” she called him. The couple’s three children, including Emma Claire, 6, and Jack, 4, joined them on stage after the speech, adding an image of youth and energy to the Democratic campaign.

Kerry’s acceptance speech tonight marks the finale of a unified party convention but also the kickoff of a bruising, closely contested fall campaign to wrest the White House from President Bush.

By orders of the Kerry command, this was a Democratic convention unlike any other in memory. While one convention speaker after another extolled the candidate’s war record, they skipped lightly over controversial issues that Democrats traditionally support — abortion rights, gun control, gay rights and affirmative action among them.

Country divided

Al Sharpton, who ran for the presidential nomination, proved an exception, departing from a convention-approved script to deliver a rousing repudiation of the Bush administration that drew frequent cheers.

“We cannot look at the Latino community and preach one language. No one gave them an English test before they sent them to Iraq to fight for America,” he said.

Opinion polls show the country divided over the war in Iraq, with Bush favored over Kerry when it comes to waging war on terrorism. Most polls show a close race for the White House, with Kerry either tied or slightly ahead.

A convention-week lull in the television ad wars was nearing an end. Officials said the Democratic National Committee was launching a fresh round of ads in more than a dozen battleground states beginning this weekend. The cost will reach $6 million in the first week alone, they added.

Bush has spent the week at his ranch in Texas, and spokesman Trent Duffy said the president devoted part of the day to taping television commercials for the fall campaign.

The White House abruptly switched its tune on the Democratic convention, with Duffy saying Bush has been “monitoring closely” and has “watched some of it from time to time” on television. An aide had said earlier in the week that Bush didn’t watch on Monday and had no plans to do so on Tuesday.