Embrace Your Inner Teddy Roosevelt

John McCain is for low taxes, rapid economic growth, and free trade. Those are the underpinnings of everything else he deems important:

Low taxes mean individuals keep more of their own money and therefore are freer to make choices and less dependent on government;

Rapid economic growth, one of the results of low taxes, produces the strong economy needed to fund an adequate defense and permit America to play its destined role in world affairs; economic growth also provides opportunities for self-advancement and finances programs that help the deserving poor;

Free trade fosters efficiency at home and strengthens America's prestige and position abroad.

The senator from Arizona is presenting himself as the inheritor of Teddy Roosevelt's view that America is "a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities." For him, domestic policy is inextricably bound up with foreign policy--only a nation with a strong, growing economy is sufficiently self-confident to bear what TR called "the heavy responsibility" of projecting "the cause of free self-government throughout the world," and has the wherewithal to discharge that responsibility.

Add to that his admiration of Ronald Reagan's efforts to define the role of government as an institution that will "stand by our side, not ride on our back." That means a government not as wildly expansionist, expensive, and intrusive as George W. Bush's, nor one insensitive to the problems of hardworking or disadvantaged Americans who might fall on hard times. Surely, that will prove to be an appealing alternative to what is on offer by the Obama and Clinton camps: higher taxes, unnecessarily intrusive regulation, more government involvement in health care, education, child care, financial markets, infrastructure construction, and just about every aspect of life.

But if McCain is to persuade the American people that his vision of a great nation is superior to the Democrats' vision of a nation retreating from involvement with the world, inhabited by people increasingly dependent on an expanding state, he will have to give vent to his populist, reforming instincts, and to the basic decency that prompted him to ignore the so-called Republican base, oppose the Bush tax cuts as excessively favorable to the already-comfortable, and support regularizing the status of immigrants.

The decency is instinctive. I once heard him reply, off the cuff, when challenged on the subject of his refusal to deport all illegals: "First, we don't have 12 million pairs of handcuffs in America. Second, what are we about as a nation if we don't welcome people who come here to improve their situations by working hard?" No cost-benefit analysis. Instead, a human reaction combined with personal observation of the work ethic of the new arrivals. And, again, a modern echo of TR, who used his first State of the Union address to declare: "We need every honest and efficient immigrant .  .  . who brings here a strong body, a stout heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose to do his duty well in every way and to bring up his children as law-abiding and God-fearing members of the community."

It is just this combination of instinct, humanity, and personal experience on which McCain must rely in forging a domestic program that might be called populist conservatism, repositioning the Republican party as "the party of Sam's Club, not just the country club," to borrow from Minnesota governor and vice presidential possibility Tim Pawlenty. Persuading voters to sign on to such an agenda will not be easy. It is not unreasonable for Americans in danger of losing their homes, or who fear that they might be next in line for some blow to their standard of living, to be a bit frightened by McCain's correct but scary statement that "it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers." Or to wonder why sauce for the Bear Stearns goose is not sauce for the beleaguered homeowners' gander.