Ramesh Ponnuru continues to make the case for John McCain and, both practically and ideologically, he's not unpersuasive.
Ponnuru sees McCain as an excellent conservative candidate:
He is solid on almost all of the important issues: the war, judges, entitlements, abortion, trade ... Even on taxes, he has righted himself. He voted against the Bush tax cuts, but he has never voted to raise income taxes and, this spring, ruled out any such move in an interview with me.
And with a McCain boomlet in progress, Ponnuru proposes that this may be a time for bold - nay, unprecedented - action: McCain could announce that he would term-limit himself to just four years in the White House:
A one-term promise would also serve McCain well in the general election. We are nearing the end of two long presidencies, which we have not done since 1960. (And these last two have been more polarizing than Truman and Eisenhower were.) It would highlight his devotion to service, and Senator Clinton's calculating ambition.
To me, this sounds a little too much like Bob Dole taking the gloves off and giving up his Senate seat during the 1996 election - a bold move that did nothing but set him on the road to Doritos and Viagra commercials. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't work!
Of course, I'm not convinced that McCain absolutely must take drastic action. As I noted last week:
In October 1999, McCain sat a bit lower in the polls than he does today. George W. Bush was the overwhelming favorite, with support in the high 60s and low 70s. In the end, McCain gave Bush all he could handle. In October 2003, Howard Dean led a crowded field with support of about 16 percent. John Kerry, who had at one time been the front-runner, sat at 8 percent in the polls. By December, Dean had pushed his lead to the 30s and Kerry had fallen to 4 percent.
This is not to say McCain's a shoe-in. If the time is right for him and his ideas, however, the voters will figure it out. And none of the candidates has such a strangle-hold on the nomination as to make it impossible for McCain to ride a wave all the way to the Twin Cities.
