Thursday, May 15, 2008

Back to the Future   [Yuval Levin]

John McCain gave a very interesting speech in Columbus, Ohio this morning, outlining what he hopes to achieve in his first term. He spoke about the war (offering some language that seems intended as an answer to the “100 years” charge), the economy, taxes, education, health care, and other issues; and about his favorite bugaboo of partisanship — saying he would, among other things, begin the practice of president’s "question time" in Congress, as others here have noted.

But the speech, and the accompanying ad released today, was organized around a description of how the country will look in 2013, after McCain’s first term. This puts him in the odd position of talking in the past tense about the future, which both causes his promises to sound more arrogant (if not naïve) than they have to and robs him of the forward looking rhetoric a speech like this could lean on (that of, for instance, Barack Obama). The ad, with its prominent “2013” theme, makes this problem particularly evident. It is frankly reminiscent of this recent spoof of Obama.

Why not speak about these goals as things you want to achieve, and tell us why the agenda as a whole suits the needs of the moment? Surely those needs, as McCain understands them, would make for a more coherent narrative than remembrances of days to come.

05/15 01:15 PMShare