McCain can't out-Obama Obama

John McCain lately seems to be making a concerted effort to distance himself from President Bush. In light of Bush's record low approval ratings, he’s right to do so. But he's talking like a liberal and angling the wrong way if he wants the upper hand in a tough battle with Barack Obama. McCain cannot out-Obama Obama. If he's going to go maverick, he needs to propose big, bold, inherently conservative ideas for the country. Calling for a timetable on the war and a cap and trade approach to carbon emissions are sickle and hammer politics.

McCain’s only chance this fall, going up against the charm, smarts, and eloquence of Obama, is to continue his no BS approach to foreign policy and conjure the brightest of our American ideals with stark domestic ideas. Veering left, besides being wrong-headed, will lose center/center-right voters and gain nothing in return.

Here’s what McCain needs to propose on these two specific issues:

The War on Islamic Terror
Don’t listen to the wikimedia narrative that wants us to believe there’s no hope and that the U.S. is weaker than ever. Petraeus has whipped the insurgency like Teddy Roosevelt did the Dakota Badlands. Violence has spiked downward and the Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish factions have all bought into democracy and power sharing. I’m not naïve enough to say it’s not messy, but our boys are spanking Al Qaeda and the Maliki government is taking on fellow Shia in Basra and Sadr City.

For the first time, we can look to the future and glimpse the face of victory. The surge has worked, and it was McCain who’d been advocating it the entire time. This gives Johnny Mac an incredible point of leverage. He can both distance himself from Bush AND take credit for crucial military foresight.

As for Iran, McCain must lay out a plan that threatens force first and diplomacy second. The carrot only works when the stick is big and scary. Obama’s proposition to sit down first is insane. In fact, there’s a narrative thread throughout Obama’s life that shows his willingness to befriend radical, anti-American (not to be mistaken for those who are constructively critical) individuals and this is quite unsettling.

Reagan didn’t sit down with Gorbachev until Gorby was scared. The next president must put the fear of god into our enemies before considering any public conversation. We need to lay out a foreign policy that claims loudly that Iran cannot obtain nuclear weapons. The military option shouldn’t just be “on the table,” it should be the table. If the left thinks we’re weak now, wait until we’re cow towing to a nuclear Iran.

Environment
U.S. carbon emissions grew by only 6.6 percent between 1997 and 2004, compared with 18 percent for the world and 21 percent for the nations that signed the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gasses.

I’m not suggesting that we needn’t focus on climate change, but I am suggesting that we focus on it intelligently. A huge government command-and-control operation like cap and trade is more sickle and hammer politics. McCain needs to get off this pony immediately. We’re all foolish if we think big businesses won’t make a fortune gaming this rigged-up market scenario. It’s an opaque system that will create an entire industry (both government and private) around regulating and exploiting the rules.

Instead, let’s combine smart government policy with the true power of free markets. Simply, McCain should advance a program that swaps a carbon tax for either an income, corporate, or social security/medicare tax cut (or some amalgamation of them all). If we really want to encourage non-carbon based energy via government policy, at least the implementation of a tax is both transparent and obvious.

Also, the cost of cutting CO2 is too pricey right now. More research and greater incentives for renewables are the only honest solution. An interesting idea comes from Bjorn Lomborg, former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen, and suggests we can achieve our green energy goals by:

spending dramatically more researching and developing low-carbon energy. Ideally, every nation should commit to spending 0.05 percent of its gross domestic production exploring non-carbon-emitting energy technologies — be they wind, wave, or solar power — or capturing CO2 emissions from power plants. This spending could add up to about $25 billion a year, but it would still be seven times cheaper than the Kyoto protocol, yet increase global research and development tenfold. All nations would be involved, but the richer ones would pay the larger share.

The GOP is suffering a cataclysmic loss of direction right now and is bereft of big ideas that will bring about real change. A tax swap and big incentives for renewable energy ventures are sound policy. Borrowing bad liberal notions and repackaging them as “maverick” is a recipe for a November Democratic sweep.