Wrong-Way McCain

It may seem impolite or ungrateful to find fault with Senator McCain after the remarkable Vietnam War service to America that Mr. McCain recounted in his convention speech. We found the account of his wartime captivity moving, and we honor it. But for all its inspiring drama, wartime valor alone isn't enough to get a veteran Republican senator elected president, as Robert Dole can attest.

And what Mr. McCain offered last night beyond biography was not much to run on. Aside from some words about competition and choice in education and the need to cut corporate tax rates, Mr. McCain's speech might have been given by President Clinton's labor secretary Robert Reich, or by Vice President Gore.

Mr. McCain managed to brag about how he had fought against the "tobacco companies" and "drug companies," and about how he had voted against "another corporate welfare bill for oil companies." With President McCain taking on drug companies, oil companies, and tobacco companies, Americans might be wondering just where they might work or invest. Not to worry; Mr. McCain vows to create jobs in new "industries that will be the engines of our future prosperity," that is, alternative energy. He promises that government will do better at "retraining workers" who have been "left behind in the changing economy."

He promised to "get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace," a devastating assessment of the current state of affairs that he underscored by speaking of those "struggling to put food on the table." He insisted, "We need to change the way our government does almost everything." It was such a gloomy view it might have been delivered at the Democratic convention, and it was a view that gives the government, not individuals or communities or businesses, responsibility for training employees and picking favored and disfavored industries.

We've been hopeful that Mr. McCain will discover a way to express pro-growth economic policies at some point in this campaign. There is still time do do that, but there won't be many opportunities like the one he managed to miss last night.

While Governor Palin shows signs of being one of the most skilled Republican politicians since Reagan, she also bragged of taking on the oil companies. She raised taxes on them in Alaska and also backed a sales tax in her hometown of Wasilla.

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All this underscores a sense, which we have had for months, that the Republican candidates in this election will run away from President Bush at their peril. We say that in respect of the war, where Bloomberg News reports that Senator Obama has now said, on Fox News, that the surge "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams" and "in ways that nobody anticipated." Well, it wasn't beyond the wildest dreams or anticipation of one savvy leader, Mr. Bush. Soon people are going have to admit that the Bush tax-cuts, which they once derided like the did the Iraq surge, helped ignite in this country a spectacular recovery in the years since both the Clinton presidency and the the attacks of September 11, 2001.

They did so because the were calculated to provide incentives to work and invest. Say what one will about Mr. Bush, but for for all his supposed unpopularity and occasional lack of articulateness, he has had a clear grasp of the substance on both foreign and domestic policy. If Mr. McCain can't find a way to articulate that, he's running in the wrong direction.