John McCain likes to drop names. Both Obama and McCain make a certain claim to post-partisanship, but both are men of their respective parties, so they engage in rhetorical flourishes to obscure their mostly orthodox ideological approaches. Obama is good at rhetorical flourishes. McCain isn’t.

So McCain does name dropping. At the Saddleback Church forum, he was asked who he would rely on in his administration. McCain said this:

I think John Lewis. John Lewis was at the Edmund Pettis Bridge, had his skull fractured, continued to serve, continues to have the most optimistic outlook about America. He can teach us all a lot about the meaning of courage and commitment to causes greater than our self- interest.

Of course, McCain has virtually no relationship with John Lewis, as Jonathan Stein confirmed soon after the forum. He just wanted everyone to know how bipartisan he is.

After saying he would fire SEC chairman Chris Cox, then asking him to resign, McCain said he would appoint Andrew Cuomo to head the SEC:

Pelley: I’m curious. If you wanna fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the SEC, who would you replace him with?

McCain: This may sound a little unusual, but I’ve admired Andrew Cuomo. I think he is somebody who could restore some credibility, lend some bipartisanship to this effort.

(Pelley took the bait like champ. “He’s a Democrat!” “Oh yes….”) As Robert George points out, Cuomo may have exacerbated the mortgage crisis by being one of a series of HUD secretaries who did little to rein in Fannie and Freddie, the companies who McCain claims genetically engineered Barack Obama in order to cause the meltdown. But he’s a Democrat! David Broder is shuddering with delight.

When asked about how to solve the credit crisis, he proposed a regulatory board staffed by somebodies:

“I respect and admire Secretary Paulson, but as far as I can tell, we’re placing all those responsibilities in the hands of one person,” Mr. McCain said. “I think we need to appoint an oversight board of the most respected people in America, such as maybe Warren Buffett, who’s a Obama supporter; Mitt Romney, Mike Bloomberg, so that there can be some kind of oversight of, instead of just putting all this responsibility on a person who may be gone in four months.”

For someone who accuses his opponent of being “a celebrity,” McCain has an unusual obsession with dropping names in lieu of actual policy positions.

–A. Serwer