More erratic flailing by the McCain campaign

Trailing in the polls, John McCain will shift gears yet again in an endeavor to gain traction in his bid for the presidency. McCain proposes to make a speech today that will hit the themes of taxes, spending, and Iraq. Mark Halperin bills the speech as an attempt to kick-start anew the campaign, but somehow, it doesn't strike me that the "new" approach is all that much different that the "old" approach.

This campaign has tried exactly two strategies. In Plan A, McCain tried to make Obama the issue, but the facts on the ground, that is, the economy, wouldn't let him diminish the campaign in that way. Then he tried Plan B, that is, to convince voters of the superiority of his positions, a host of tired cliches warmed over from Ronald Reagan. When his policy positions failed, he returned to Plan A, sliming Obama, but he did it with greater ferocity in the second attempt, an apparent tip of his hat to the modernist predilection for quantity over quality. That attempt backfired, so now it appears that Senator McCain is going to revert to Plan B, but this time he will provide us an even more fervent account of his truly original thoughts from the 1980s about the future of the United States in the 2010s.

So here is a schematic reprise of John McCain's erratic campaign themes:

Plan A
Plan B
Plan A²
Plan B²

For those of you who didn't like the book, I suggest you safely can skip the movie.