Mac's Tactics Time-Tested ... But This Ain't the Time

Any day now, John McCain will mock John Kerry for flip-flopping. Or maybe go with George H.W.’s “Read my lips, no new taxes,” pledge, even Eisenhower’s “I shall go to Korea.” What he won’t do is offer anything new, because all year he’s “seemed intent on fighting the last war, or rather, waging the last campaign,” Scot Lehigh writes in the Boston Globe.

At a time the GOP most needed to reinvent itself, McCain botched his chance, supporting Bush policies he once decried. He’s been forced to fall back on tired character attacks, like his “tinny and trivial” attempt to brand Barack Obama a “socialist.” His belated calls to “fight for a new direction” fall flat—that’s Obama’s schtick now. “For McCain, the die is cast.” (More Election 2008 stories.)