What Does McCain Need To Do To Get His Mojo Back?

This question has been percolating around the blogosphere and on the right for the last week, after it became clear that the financial crisis was an inflection point in the election that did not inure to McCain's benefit.  I thought I'd add my two cents on this.

My first thought is kind of a dodge, but I think its important to keep the bigger picture in mind.  Not every election is winnable, and this might just be an election that the GOP was not supposed to win, even against a fairly weak candidate like Obama.  An economic shock was for the Democrats what an attack by terrorists would be for Republicans -- a game changer that focused undecideds on what they liked most about one party and liked least about the other.  Just as a national security crisis would likely have made Americans turn to a war leader like John McCain, so to an economic crisis turned voters toward the Democrats.  It also brought to the forefront the titular party leader, who happens to have a 30% approval rating.  That Obama is getting to around 50% does not surprise me -- in fact it only surprises me that it is that low.

At the same time, I'm not 100% convinced that all is lost.  Looking at the RCP average of national polling, we see that the difference between a three-point Obama lead (Democracy Corps) and a nine-point Obama lead (CBS News) is almost entirely found in the variance in McCain's numbers.  To put it in geeky statistical terms, Obama's variance in his national polling numbers is 1.69697, McCain's is 3.295455.  This could be statistical noise, but it could also be that Obama has convinced the people he is going to convince, and that there is a section of the electorate that is still not comfortable with him that is leaning toward McCain.  It may not matter since Obama is now pretty darned close to 50%, but there's at least a shot that McCain can still keep this close and potentially eke out a victory -- and making it close may be the difference between a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate and 57-58 seats.

So what's McCain to do to maximize his chances of winning?  I think that first he needs to sharpen his attacks.  This is not a 1990s election when people aren't tuned in, where generic ads about "painful taxes" will get it done.  People are paying very close attention, and while I generally am not one to underestimate the public's ignorance on political issues, but I think one advantage Obama has had on McCain is that his attacks that I have seen have tended to be more specific as to what John McCain has done, or will do.  I also think that attacks on the Fannie Mae crisis will be tough to pull off, as for better or for worse, the Republicans are the party of big business, and even though J-Mac isn't your average Republican, he's still a Republican (thank God Mitt isn't the nominee right now).

The other thing I think he needs to do is to settle on some kind of message.  This "originial Mavericks" schtick is a good one, but again, I still think people have some sense for what Obama would do as President.  I started to get worried about this when, after seeing Obama's commercial about taxing companies who send jobs over sees, my paleo-conservative mother said "that sounds like a pretty good idea." 

There's no comparable ad for McCain that I've seen.  McCain is making the same mistake that Obama nearly fatally made in the early primaries -- he's using vague promises which allows his opponent to paint on the canvas that he has left blank. 

In most elections, I think generic promises about lower taxes is enough to generate sufficient warm fuzzies from the electorate.  But this isn't "most elections."  There is an atypical Republican running against an atypical Democrat.  John McCain needs to make sure people believe the former, and ensure they absolutely believe the latter.

Oh, and no more suspending the campaign or generaly looking like you're running around like a chicken with your head cutoff.