What is clear is that John McCain cannot afford to respond as George HW Bush did (or didn't), and I think he's made a good start.
First, he needs to give straight talk about the economy. He has to show how the Democrats are talking down the economy for political purposes and ignoring a historical perspective. For example, the Democrats extol the Clinton years with higher tax rates and a balanced budget. We have to point out that the American economy today is larger, lower mean unemployment, greater homeownership, and higher tax revenues--with the Bush tax cuts. We have to point out second quarter GDP at a revised growth rate at over 3%--not a recession by definition. We should point out that Europe, with a more socialized economy, the very kind of nanny state policies that Barack Obama wants to promote, is already at or near recession with higher interest rates and unemployment and there have been more significant stock market corrections internationally.
Does that mean John McCain should be pollyannaish about the current economy? Of course not. And, in fact, he specifically talked 3 examples of families facing tough times during his nomination acceptance speech. Energy and food inflation costs have cut into household discretionary income, and I believe that McCain can directly point to dysfunctional Dem policies that can be attributed to these problems, by promoting a structural economic dependence on foreign energy suppliers (where we are having to bid against other import-dependent economies for limited surplus supplies) and raising the bar against domestic energy production.
Second, John McCain needs to address the Dem policies which adversely affect the job creation machine: uncompetitive business taxes, higher than any developed economy except for Japan, which distort investment decisions by businesses and individuals to less costly foreign investment alternatives; trade protectionism, which closes the export economy, a key source of good-paying American jobs; an agrarian-calendar public education monopoly, which does not provide math and science-savvy graduates needed for better-paying positions in a knowledge economy; obsolete counterproductive economic "solutions", including restrictive minimum wage; health insurance policies tied to employment, which hampers job migration, discriminates against those whom must purchase with after-tax dollars, and distorts the cost basis for American products, making them less competitive, and extensions of unemployment benefits, which may prolong proactive decisions by unemployed people to train for a new career or to migrate to areas with better employment prospects; job-killing business regulations posed by government bureaucrats, which increases the cost of doing business and pose a barrier to entry and resulting competitive products and services; obstructionism in domestic energy production, such as so-called windfall profits taxes and litigation or bans on drilling in ANWR, offshore drilling, and oil-shale production or blocking nuclear power plants, while Democrats throw money down the drain on unscalable boutique solutions which do nothing about powering, e.g., our existing fleet of vehicles, or suboptimal side-effects like the effect of corn ethanol on food inflation--a do-nothing policy on a structural deficit of carbon-based energy production which diverts American driver, trucking, and airline passenger dollars to energy-suplus economies, instead of American energy companies and employees; and obsolete immigration policies, which deter merit-based recruitment of professional and entrepreneurial foreign workers needed by key American technology companies to compete in the global economy and health services.
Finally, John McCain needs to flesh out and contrast GOP 21st-century alternative employment policies and reforms to the Democrats' same old same old: things like tax credits for university or technical job training and/or interim underemployment, decoupling of tax-advantaged benefits from employment, and benefit portability.
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