McCainomics

Matt Cooper reports from St. Paul: If you didn't know anything about John McCain's economic views before the Republican convention, you may not know a lot more now that he's given his acceptance speech.

The convention was big on national service and reform and McCain's own compelling life story and that of his running mate, Sarah Palin. But the economic message was spare in the prime-time hours. Those of us in the hall or C-SPAN nerds at home, who sat through the lesser speakers, got to hear more. But the major speeches were sparing in the time they spent on economics, and that was true of the finale.

So ask yourself this question: If McCain wins in November, what can he get done with a Democratic congress? First, get set for a lot of vetoing. If there's one thing at the heart of McCain's governing philosophy, it's vetoing what he sees as pork. There are two problems with that. The first is that pork—the bridge to nowhere that Sarah Palin supported before she was against it—is not the major budgetary issue facing the country. Entitlements, interest on the debt, and defense are the big sources of government spending. The rest of it is small. Second, pork, as bad as it is, has been a lubricant of government for a long time. Besides, one man's pork is another's chateaubriand.

McCain promised to hold the line on taxes and he has new cuts poised, most notably an elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax and the doubling of the childcare tax credit. He'd keep the Bush tax cuts, the ones he voted against. I don't think he'll bend on the Bush tax cuts, but getting his new ones through Charlie Rangel's Ways and Means Committee seems like a pretty tough haul.

On energy, McCain's drill-baby-drill approach has a lot of momentum behind it and I suspect that he'd be able to push a Democratic congress on opening more land for drilling. On trade, I think he'd have a tough time passing new bilateral trade agreements just as President Bush has. (Bush, of course, went unmentioned in McCain's address.) On health care, I think McCain's plan is dead on arrival. Don't see congress going down the road of tax incentives and not doing anything on Medicare costs. A more bipartisan health care plan could emerge under McCain. He was there for the Patients' Bill of rights and the tobacco settlement and there's no reason he couldn't get something done on health care. I just don't think it will look like what McCain has proposed.

When it comes to the liquidity crisis, I'd look for McCain to be to the right of Bush. He was somnolent when the crisis began, and had a less activist plan than what Henry Paulson came up with. That could change but I think you'll have a less interventionist approach to the mortgage and liquidity messes, and more just letting the storm work it's way through the economy.

Somewhere in all of this is a McCain philosophy. It's a Reagan approach of lower taxes and less government. But it's not one that's totally government averse and in that sense McCain borrows a bit from Bush, not so much in things like the expansion of Medicare into a full-blown prescription drug benefit. But McCain is more than willing to take an interventionist line in the economy as we saw during his chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee where he oversaw major telecommunications legislation. His support of campaign finance reform was a kind of economic intervention against wealthy interests.

But that's all assuming McCain gets to be president. I think he can win. I think Barack Obama can too.

I'm not sure politically McCain helped himself tonight. It was a somnolent speech until it got to the parts about his Vietnam heroism, but it was laundry listy and less than poetic before that. Palin's address was much fiery and more appealing. Being in the hall, you couldn't help but notice that the reform lines were greeted by polite applause while the red-meat lines on abortion or union bosses got a more rousing reception. It shows where McCain's party is at even as it nominates someone who, in the past anyway, has taken it on.

On a day when the markets dropped over 300 points and there's still a feeling the economy could go off a cliff, it was a less economic and less business oriented speech than I would have guessed. But perhaps that's not surprising. These aren't the issues that drive McCain the way foreign policy or reform does. If he's just phoning it in on those parts of the speech it's not surprising that others would tune it out too.

Matt Cooper

Photo credit: John McCain accepts the Republican presidential nomination at the Xcel Center in St. Paul. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

Get more from the Republican convention in St. Paul with these:
-- A G.O.P. Drilling Machine.
-- Should We Take Economic Advice From Fiorina?
-- Republicans' Bizarre Night
-- Mr. Rove, They're Ready for You in Makeup
-- The G.O.P.s Gov Child.
-- The Republicans Get a Mulligan With Gustav.
-- McCain's Pick of Palin a Game Changer.
-- Drill, Baby, Drill!
-- Where to Eat in the Twin Cities.
-- How to Party Like a Rockstar TV Star With Republicans.

Get a recap of what happened with the Democrats in Denver:
-- The End of the Affair.
-- Obama Gets Down to Business.
-- Are Obama's Donors Tapped Out?
-- Google's Schmidt: "They Have Guns and We Don't"
-- Why Does Everyone Want In on the Act?
-- I'm T. Boone Pickens and This Will Save America.
-- The Election According to Mr. Burns.
-- The Portfolio.com Capital Index.