John McCain declared yesterday that within four years of being elected president he would have won the Iraq war, killed or captured Osama bin Laden, halted the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and introduced British-style Prime Minister’s Questions in Congress.

The Republican nominee-elect, setting out his stall for an election campaign against the Democrats, used an ambitious speech to define their differences and look back on his first term from the vantage point of 2013.

“By January 2013 . . . the Iraq war has been won,” Mr McCain told an audience in Columbus, Ohio, a key election battleground. “Iraq is a functioning democracy . . . violence still occurs but it is spasmodic and much reduced.” He said that most American troops will have been “welcomed home” by then.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both vowed to begin a withdrawal of troops if elected, a move Mr McCain has called reckless. Democrats have accused him of wanting to keep the US entangled in Iraq for 100 years. It is a misleading interpretation of remarks by the Arizona senator that he would be happy for the US to be in Iraq for a century – but only in a noncombat role similar to the long-term American military presence in Japan, South Korea and Germany.

Mr McCain said that his first term would be marked by the “capture or death of Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants”. He added that there “still has not been a major terrorist attack in the US since September 11, 2001”.

The Republican candidate, who will be 72 on Inauguration Day – and thus possibly the oldest president elected to a first term – insists that he is still full of energy. He predicted several years of robust economic growth under his stewardship, a flat tax rate, the 13 million illegal immigrants in America living humanely under a temporary worker programme and a halt to the genocide in Darfur.

A centrepiece of a McCain presidency, he said, would be a different style of governance, one in which Democrats would serve in his Administration and partisanship will end. “My Administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability. I will hold weekly press conferences. When we make errors, I will confess them readily and explain what we intend to do to correct them.”

Turning to a prime ministerial ordeal greatly admired by the American political class, Mr McCain said: “I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both Houses to take questions and address criticism, much the same as the Prime Minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.”

Stephen Hess, a former adviser to presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Carter, said: “It’s an interesting proposal. It has a certain pizzazz.” However, “It’s a proposal that shows he’s not thinking like a president.”

Mr Hess said that Mr McCain should be wary of what he wished for because it would greatly limit the powers of the presidency. American presidents have great control over the questions they face. Bill Clinton came to office promising regular press grillings. He held 45 press conferences in his first term. In 1998, at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, he held two.

Vince Cable, who, in his brief stint as the head of the Liberal Democrats, was judged to be the most effective opposition leader at PMQs since William Hague, warned Mr McCain what to expect. “It’s a very good system not for holding governments to account but for deflating the pomposity of high office.”

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