Why McCain's Speech Was Dull

So. I thought Candidate McCain's acceptance speech was inevitably dull. He doesn't have "programs" because he isn't an ideological guy. He thinks people take care of themselves pretty well, but he isn't interested in rehashing debates about government in order to roll it back. He'll live with the government we've got, but wants to address the emergent issues without building new nests for various politicized rent-seekers.

Since taking Congress in 1994, the GOP's establishment has sought rents with the best of them. Elected to reform government, they preferred to carve out niches for their friends and collect fees for redirecting its resources and navigating its regulations. Our Constitution has checked the inevitable human impulse to abuse power, but the welfare state has created opportunities to instead milk it. We've evolved a political class that understands that power exists in journalists and administrators and academics and organizers and has expanded itself to include them all. Selling office outright is dangerous because the purchaser could use the power to reappropriate the fee, so they've revised simony to instead lease out the office -- it's safer, and the income stream is just as good a lump sum payment. They share the wealth with book deals and consulting contracts and promotions and job security. Jack Abramoff was just stupid -- why expose yourself breaking the letter of the law when you make plenty of money hiding behind half-truths and plausibilities?

Candidate McCain doesn't really like his party. His favorite line was the promise to veto to pork barrel appropriations. His party doesn't really like him, he's going to reduce the size of the pie available. But this subset of the political class knows they don't get any pie at all without him -- it's the only reason they're nominating him. It's a bitter deal and he can't rail too much against them for fear they'll get so demoralized they'll just give up. And he's too intelligent to believe that Clintonesque "programs" will make a damn bit of difference, and too honest to pretend he thinks he does.

John McCain would mark the country through his action, not his program. He would demonstrate the faults of a culture and an approach. That's fuzzy stuff, but it's real, and he has the record to show just how he would act in the future. If Teddy Roosevelt was a response to the perversions of free market principles by monopolists and businessmen, John McCain is a response to the distortions of "equality" by welfare state rentiers. It makes for a dull speech, but it is a positive response to the challenges we face right now.