McCain's running out of time - and tactics
IT'S A GRIM situation that confronts John McCain.
So what could the Republican nominee do to turn this campaign around?
Why, here's a thought. He could mock John Kerry for saying that he voted for funding our troops in Iraq before he voted against it. After all, that did wonders for George W. Bush in 2004.
No one cares anymore, you say?
Well, then, he could try this line: "Read my lips, no new taxes." George H.W. Bush got good mileage out of that in 1988. Of course, that pledge went for naught. And McCain has already rejected new taxes, if in less memorable language.
OK, so maybe McCain could pose this query to voters: "Are you better off than you were eight years ago?" Ronald Reagan hit a walk-off home run with a similar question back in 1980. Of course, the "no" that would boom back probably wouldn't work as well for McCain as it did for the Gipper.
No one wants to take his cue from Richard Nixon, so let's delve further back into campaign history.
Eureka! McCain could proclaim: "I shall go to Korea."
That worked wonderfully for Dwight Eisenhower, another distinguished old soldier, back in 1952. True, there's no war on the Korean Peninsula anymore, but from what I hear the shopping's pretty good.
Here, a word to the unwary. These are not serious suggestions. Rather, it's satire in pursuit of this point: In the months since he wrapped up the Republican nomination, McCain has seemed intent on fighting the last war, or rather, waging the last campaign, adopting tired character attacks and political tactics that come off as tinny and trivial in the face of our enormous national challenges.
Indeed, to the degree that the McCain-Palin campaign has had an overarching message in the last few weeks, it's been negative: the old standby that Barack Obama is weak on national security, plus the newer claim that he's a reflexive tax raiser and redistributor of income. A socialist, even.
Yes, it's true that hiking taxes on upper-earners will redistribute some wealth. But the notion that Obama's income tax proposals represent a radical break with American history or a plunge into socialism is laughable. The Democrat would simply return to Clinton-era income tax rates for family incomes of $250,000 or more. That would affect only 2.5 percent of US taxpayers, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. Obama's broader tax plans would spell a tax increase of some sort for about 10 percent of households, according to the Tax Policy Center.
No doubt it's precisely because of the relatively thin slice of taxpayers who would be affected that McCain and Palin would rather raise the specter of socialism than argue tax policy on the merits.
Still, it's surprising that a candidate who cherished his reputation as a serious man and an independent thinker would wage this kind of campaign. Yes, that has played to the GOP base, just as Bush's politics have, but it's left independents unmoved, while detracting from McCain's supposed strengths.
Now, it was always going to be difficult for another Republican to succeed George W. Bush, given the colossal hash the incumbent has made of things. Then the financial markets melted down, crystallizing an already anxious national mood and making the GOP's economic philosophy even more suspect.
And yet, the John McCain of 2000 might have had a fighting chance to seize the moment, if he could have plausibly portrayed himself as a different sort of Republican.
But having reversed his one-time opposition to the Bush tax cuts to embrace them in their entirety - and indeed, having proposed another expensive round of tax breaks - McCain can no longer do so credibly.
As the campaign closes, the Republican nominee claims that he and Obama "both disagree with President Bush on economic policy." On the signal issues of this campaign, however, McCain's base-pleasing approach has made him seem of a piece with the president.
"Fight for a new direction for our country," McCain urges voters.
But that's a theme Obama owns. And for McCain, the die is cast.
Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. 