McCain's New Plan: Describing Having Plans

It's always a bad sign when a political candidate runs around talking about how they have plans to do things that they then utterly fail to describe. John McCain either is set to give or did give the following speech at a rally in Virginia today, a speech which boldly sets out the fact that he will boldly set out plans.

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.

I have a plan to protect the value of your home and get it rising again by buying up bad mortgages and refinancing them so if your neighbor defaults he doesn’t bring down the value of your house with him.

I have a plan to let retirees and people nearing retirement keep their money in their retirement accounts longer so they can rebuild their savings.

I have a plan to rebuild the retirement savings of every worker.

I have a plan to hold the line on taxes and cut them to make America more competitive and create jobs here at home.

This was Kerry's problem in 2004 - he'd constantly assure people that he had plans, and then launch into bromides against Bush without putting any meat on the plan bones, in order to create the shambling zombie plans we all love and marginally fear while we're reloading our electoral shotguns.

Wow, I have no idea where that metaphor came from or where it's going.

But this is McCain's last few weeks turnaround? A staunch reminder that the things he's proposed which haven't caught on with the voting public are still there, only marginally more vague and immeasurably more irrelevant? It's the undying quandary of the McCain campaign - they have no hand to play and are stuck just lashing out in every direction, hoping desperately that something sticks without the realization that these things require dedication in order to stick in the first place. The final story of this campaign may not be Change vs. Maverick, but the guy who stuck by his guns versus the one who went every direction imaginable.