McCain praises Obama at NAACP

CINCINNATI, July 16 (UPI) -- Presumptive Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain, speaking to the NAACP in Cincinnati Wednesday, praised his likely opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.

Noting Obama's accomplishment of likely becoming the nation's first-ever African-American major party presidential nominee, Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., said the Illinois Democrat has achieved something special.

"Don't tell him I said this, but he is an impressive fellow in many ways," he told attendees at the annual NAACP convention in Cincinnati. "He has inspired a great many Americans, some of whom had wrongly believed that a political campaign could hold no purpose or meaning for them."

Obama leads McCain by a wide margin among blacks in most presidential preference polls, but McCain took the opportunity to address the NAACP anyway as a chance to highlight his education reform proposals.

He told the audience he supports the goals of school vouchers that allow parents to pick which schools children can attend, and blasted what he called entrenched bureaucracies and unions that oppose them.

"When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet ... minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children," he said.