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Ross Douthat is right about the difficulties within John McCain's new candy-and-ice-cream approach to economics:
Successful presidential candidacies depend on narratives as much as on specific policies -- Ronald Reagan as the foe of bloated government, Bill Clinton as a Mr. Fix-It for an economy in recession, George W. Bush as the "compassionate conservative," etc. Going into '08, McCain seemed to have a ready-made narrative: He was going to run as the budget-balancing grown-up, the old-school Republican out to restore sanity to Washington after the binges of the Bush years. But his campaign seems to have decided that running as the candidate of belt-tightening and balanced budgets in a year when economic insecurity is uppermost in voters' minds would be folly. Thus the grab-bag approach on display in this speech, in which calls for fiscal responsibility jostle for space with tax cuts and giveaways of various kinds.This is almost certainly a wiser approach than running as the prince of budgetary rectitude and nothing else, but by leaving McCain without a signal theme, it runs the risk that the media will end up deciding which aspects of his program get highlighted, and what narrative he ends up saddled with. If he's lucky, the press will highlight the populist themes and proposals, and portray him (once again) as the heir to Teddy Roosevelt. If he isn't, though, they'll peg him as a flip-flopping opportunist -- or worse, as George W. Bush redux.On some level, this is the much more general question for the McCain candidacy: Can McCain sell his policies to conservatives while selling his personality to the electorate? His current raft of proposals are, in the aggregate, wildly unpopular with the broader public. His health care policy is very literally about dismantling comprehensive insurance and protection from costs. His economic policy is a tremendously regressive tax cut that focuses on corporate rates. His foreign policy is what would happen if you elected Dick Cheney. Conversely, his political obsessions are idiosyncratic, his legislative persona is predicated on the hunt for common ground, and much of his reputation is built around a willingness to change his mind. All those traits might suggest to conservatives that a President McCain would decide he'd rather be a beloved bipartisan leader than the second coming of George W. Bush. It's a tricky balancing act, but just as tightrope walkers have a pole to help them distribute weight, McCain is relying on the media to convey the right messages at the right times. In the past, hes been able to trust them, and their affection for him. But in the past, he's always been in a space they're more comfortable with: The right wing insurgent who's a bit of a conservative, but not like all those other conservatives. Now he's got Grover Norquist's seal of approval. That may change things.
