9-08-08, 1:22 pm

Since the Republican convention, John McCain has begun to campaign against himself, the Republican Party's record, and against George W. Bush. He has mimicked the Obama campaign's slogan of change so much, he appears to be having an identity crisis. John McCain is trying to convince Americans that his party hasn't been the ruling party the past eight years and that he hasn't voted with George W. Bush more than 90 percent of the time.

But the mantle of change John McCain wants to assume keeps slipping. While both McCain's and Palin's speeches to their party's convention may have never mentioned the name George W. Bush, they did re-hash the Republican Party's standard slogans and policies, lied about their opponent's record, mocked people who are active in their communities, and unleashed a George W. Bush style campaign. Behind all the mud, they adopted one of the most ultra-right Republican Party platform's in that party's history.

Amazingly, in their claim to be the candidates for change, neither Palin nor McCain mentioned the economic crisis. After eight straight months of job losses that have seen 605,000 jobs disappear this year alone and a jump in the unemployment rate to the highest level in five years – the opening of what many economists see as second recession of the George W. Bush era – one might think that John McCain would address the problem and lay out policies for fixing it.

But, John McCain, like George W. Bush, opposes serious intervention on economic issues unless it comes to providing new tax breaks for Big Oil and wealthy corporate executives or bailing out huge corporations that have made bad business decisions. He used his Senate vote to block efforts to end tax incentives for companies to move jobs out of the country. He stood in the way of legislative efforts to keep homeowners facing foreclosure in their homes and making mortgage payments more affordable.

McCain even basically told Midwestern voters that he expects more job losses, and that he has given up on the idea of fighting to keep jobs in the country. (His record on free trade agreements and tax incentives for companies that want to kill jobs here and move out of the country suggests, however, that he never fought to keep jobs here in the first place.)

McCain, who owns seven homes worth an estimated $14 million, basically implied that the 1.2 million people who face foreclosure right now due to horrible decisions by bankers and the credit crunch are lazy and stupid.

While John McCain is proposing a $4 billion tax cut for Big Oil companies who are seeing record profits off of price gouging and speculation, he has proposed nothing that will create new jobs or provide real relief to working families.

McCain's lack of motivation to turn the economic crisis around stems from his confused thinking on the economy. As recently as a week ago, McCain told reporters that he thinks the US economy is fundamentally sound. Perhaps if there is a dip in Big Oil's profits, he'd change his mind.

When it comes to economic policy, Americans can expect no change from John McCain.

--Reach Joel Wendland at