I really like this analysis of the gambling habits of John McCain and Barack Obama, but I'm not sure it's exceptionally helpful--in fact, in the case of McCain, it gets things backwards. McCain's problem has not been that he's taken lots of high risk moves (though he's taken a few) but rather that he's not been nearly risky enough. If he keeps doing what he's been doing for the past four months he's going to get his ass kicked in November, and probably by a pretty huge margin. Yet he remains steadfastly committed to his base-centric-plus-some-independents plan. And it ain't workin'.
Hey, if McCain wanted to make a bold move I'd welcome it. It would make things more interesting. I'd love to see him try to drop one of the legs of the GOP's stool to appeal to independents--really, significantly breaking from the GOP line on any major area of policy would be better, if for no other reason than that I'd like to see the GOP move a bit to the center and shed some crazies. I've suggested cutting the supply-siders loose numerous times, largely because there aren't many of them and most Republicans aren't of the tax-cuts-so-help-me-God camp. It'd be harder for McCain to raise money, sure, but he'd still be better than Obama to those folks and the balanced-budget types would be ascendant (and I'm actually sympathetic to them). Also, it would probably cause chaos, which is also good for me. But I think it's becoming clear--especially when one considers that Obama is managing to win the center despite not giving up anything of substance along the way--that McCain's going to have to do something like this or just settle for losing and being the last of the Reagan era of GOP presidental candidates. Is he comfortable with that? I'm beginning to think he is, and the Republicans ought to be very afraid of it.
