The polls are settling back down after all the craziness of the last few weeks. If the election were held today, I think McCain would fall just short, losing in the Electoral College something like 273-265 or even 269-269 (a tie would be broken by the Democrat-controlled House). (Here's a good Electoral College simulator). His campaign has been tactically smart but he has no real policy message to speak of on the issues people care about right now. Even if he did, he also is having trouble with unprecedented media bias which is making it almost impossible to get his message out from day to day.
I think it's time for McCain to do something dramatic to break through the malaise. He should pledge that, if elected, he'll only serve one term. He should announce this at the first debate (one of his last remaining chances to speak directly to the American people without the media distortion field) and explain that he intends to govern as a non-partisan, caretaker President who will concentrate on cleaning up some of the obscene mess our governing elite has created over the years that is now blowing up in our faces. He could run on the following platform:
1) Win the war in Afghanistan and consolidate our gains in Iraq.
2) Find Bin Laden and kill him already.
3) Announce that Joe Lieberman would be the Secretary of Defense (underscoring the "non-partisan" message).
4) Pick respected people (maybe Mitt Romney and/or Michael Bloomberg) to manage the impending mortgage debt bailout and AIG dismemberment with minimum pain for taxpayers (in other words, try to stop Wall Street from fleecing the rest of the country, which they'll try to do).
5) Reform immigration policy in a way that seals our borders while resolving the status of illegals, and making it easier to attract well-educated immigrants. (This is something he could work with Democrats on).
6) Close Guantanamo (I'm personally not sure this is a good idea but it would be a nice gesture at least).
7) Get serious about cutting the federal budget (not just earmarks, which are a rounding error in the great scheme of things, but larger programs like farm subsidies, etc). If Congress doesn't go along (and they won't), just veto one spending bill after another until they do. If the government shuts down like it did for a time in the mid-90s, who gives a shit?
At an opportune moment in the first debate on Friday, McCain could say something like this: "listen, my fellow Americans, as we all know, our country is really fucked up in a lot of ways right now. It's the result of policy mistakes made by both parties going back decades. I'm as mad as you are about everything that's happened. And, I'm not even going to waste any more time playing the blame game. I just want to fix it. But before we can even think about long-term solutions to problems like health care or education, there are certain messes we have to clean up in the next four years. I want to concentrate on doing that, without having to worry about getting re-elected. My sole goal would be to clean up these messes so that the next President - whoever it might be - can focus on the longer-term problems".
This approach might even defuse concerns about his age a bit, since he wouldn't be finishing his tenure as an 80-year old. He'd also now have an all-purpose response to any of Obama's grandiose spending and taxing plans - "sorry, bud, times have changed, we can't afford any of that garbage right now. Maybe in 2012 after we deal with all this other shit".
Comments