As Exciting As A Thoughtful Man Can Be

McCain's domestic platform is the expulsion of the money changers from the temple. He's different in that he's serious. The proposals are a little thin because it's hard to imagine an American government that isn't veined through and through with bestiary of personal, particular and parochial interests. But it's new in that this guy is _serious_ -- witness the shots at his own party -- and temperamentally prepared to go at it. This guy is way more combative than Reagan. The only proposal he enjoyed last night was vetoing appropriations bills.

McCain's contempt for his own party has been constrained by the imperatives of winning. He is truly worried about islamism and convinced that this is a key moment to build a strategy to defeat. He's dutiful and prudent enough to accept that he has to play footsie with his party's bosses so he can acquire a position of leadership, and he'll have the same constraint in office. But he'll go after self-dealing wherever he can. I'm not sure how effectively he can reform Washington, but if nothing else the effort will be instructive.

He hasn't explicitly condemned Bush's exploitation of foreign policy for political advantage, but I think he's too averse to party to follow in that vein. He's sincere in his appreciation of others' honest love of country, and I think he'll naturally find ways to forge a foreign policy consensus that includes at least the conservative wing of the Democratic party.

We would have a better politics after a McCain presidency -- more unified, more transparent -- and we would have a better view of what's really wrong in Washington. We'll have a more balanced and sustainable energy policy, and maybe a lower deficit and some progress toward choices in schools, but I don't see any more specific agenda than that. McCain would mark the country not through policy campaigns but by the reaction of a decent and honest man to the self-dealing of our political bureacracy. Teddy Roosevelt was an American reaction to the perversion by monopolists and capitalists of institutions ostensibly justified by free market principles; McCain is an American reaction to the perversions of institutions ostensibly justified by "equality" and "national security".

He can't give a rousing speech because his appeal is active, not calculated, and because he has to make a devil's bargain with the party bosses to actually achieve power. The risk is that his reform instinct is constantly stifled by that bargain. But the political classes have accumulated so much influence that a reformer can't take office without them -- and I think we're only getting McCain's nomination now because a subset of that class realizes that he's their only ticket back. The GOP establishment will accept some reduction of the political loot by McCain because they realize they aren't getting any loot at all without him, but it's a bitter calculation, and their prone to demoralization if his anti-party rhetoric goes too far.

So this was a dull speech, hemmed in on one side by political calculation and on the other by an honest conservative skepticism. But I think this guy is determined and thoughtful, and I hope people are paying enough attention to respond to what he's offering.