How McCain Could Win

The post below (and the NYT article cited throughout) paints a picture familiar to Pentagon generals, bankers, industrialists, and anyone else who deals with Presidents, Congress, or their regulatory minions.

The lesson is plain to see: politicians inevitably screw things up. LBJ personally interfered with battle planning in Vietnam, which led to a helluva mess there (albeit the Democrat Congress later simply raped South Vietnam.) Industry which sells to any Government inevitably has to deal with layers of politically-motivated rules and regs which often lead to bankruptcy (see Allis-Chalmers and the Jimmy Carter "gasification" project, e.g., or the auto industry's troubles with the "safety"/"fuel efficient" conflicting mandates). The Park East redevelopment is a great local example--with all the "social goods" developers are expected to implement, re-development is near impossible. At the State level, political interference in electrical-power generation promises nothing but higher and higher rates with little likelihood of "improving the Earth."

McCain has the opportunity to actually commit "straight talk" in the next few weeks. Were he to tie Obama to the mortgage crisis (not hard to do, given Obama's ACORN connections and his close ties to the Fannie/Freddie crowd) and point out that the United States is a financial shipwreck due to these and the impending Social Security/Medicare crises, and that McCain's Administration will seek to un-do the damage by severely limiting spending---not just 'earmarks,' but ALL spending, while keeping taxation at the bare minimum necessary to sustain essential functions--he could pull this out of the fire.

Attacking Obama on his nefarious friends may be helpful--but attaching Obama to the Big Spenders, Big Regulators, and Big Tax people, while underlining the disasters that happened due to Big Government's political influences will be much more effective.

We all know where Obama's coming from. And we all know where he's going.

McCain, of course, is vulnerable--he's as much a "Big Government" guy as you can find in the Republican Party. The smart thing for him to do is smile and say "mea maxima culpa" and promise to reform his ways.

Big Spending--$200 Bn to rescue Fan/Fred, and another $700 Bn to rescue Banks--is an issue. A big chunk of those dollars are being spent to remedy political interference in the marketplace.

I seriously doubt that John McCain has the cojones to go this route.

But he should.