I read over the text of John McCain's speech this morning, and was struck by how much it resembled the kind of speech Obama has given in the past to try and change the dynamics of the campaign season. It doesn't offer any new proposals, it simply tries to recast the narrative of the race. Ironic because McCain has always attacked this "mere words" approach. McCain doesn't bring anything new to the table in terms of policy, just the usual cut taxes and we'll be fine statement we've come to expect. Notably, there is a lot of patriotism and no attacks Obama's character, just the requisite distorted attacks on his policies. It seems my last question here has been answered: Let McCain be McCain again!
The next President won't have time to get used to the office. He won't have the luxury of studying up on the issues before he acts. He will have to act immediately. ... We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change. The hour is late; our troubles are getting worse; our enemies watch. We have to act immediately. We have to change direction now. We have to fight.
Cool! How?
I'm not going to spend $700 billion dollars of your money just bailing out the Wall Street bankers and brokers who got us into this mess. I'm going to make sure we take care of the people who were devastated by the excesses of Wall Street and Washington. I'm going to spend a lot of that money to bring relief to you, and I'm not going to wait sixty days to start doing it.
But ...
I will freeze government spending on all but the most important programs like defense, veterans care, Social Security and health care until we scrub every single government program and get rid of the ones that aren't working for the American people. And I will veto every single pork barrel bill Congresses passes.
Ah. So I'm going to give you a lot of money ... and then freeze everything else! And indeed, as has been noted, McCain's plan is in fact more of a giveaway to lenders than Paulson's approach -- now based on recapitalizing banks -- which has the potential to actually make money. Under McCain's plan the government will certainly take a loss. And of course freezing government spending (except on four of the most expensive things it does) will have little affect on the deficit but will disproportionately hurt the low-income people who depend on federal funding for, say, school funding, heating oil in the winter, food stamps, etc. But it certainly sounds very decisive when you say it.
And indeed, sounding decisive without doing much deciding is the theme of this speech. He says fight 19 times, plan eight times. But he doesn't provide much in the way of specifics about these plans he'll be fighting for; indeed, it reminded me of the moment during the debate when McCain said he knew how to get Osama bin Laden -- really? Will you let the President know?
The whole thing is after the jump for your reading pleasure.
-- Tim Fernholz
