What McCain Economic Policy?

With the latest Gallup poll showing that 81% of Americans surveyed hold negative views on the state of our economy, Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post notes that John McCain is adrift on policy proposals to address the problem.

Gramm hasn't been the only McCain economic adviser to sound dissonant notes of late. Bloomberg's Al Hunt reports that Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief, has said that if a bipartisan coalition came up with tax increases on the rich, a McCain administration might embrace the proposal. On Tuesday, however, a campaign spokesman reiterated McCain's opposition to such tax hikes.

How to explain the McCain campaign's glaring contradictions on economic policy? Why do the policy mantras that every campaign uses and needs get so warped and so ignored? Why can't the campaign stay on message? The turmoil in management that has afflicted the campaign from the start surely deserves some of the blame, but I suspect the issues run deeper. One problem is that McCain himself has no real ideas about how to fix the economy, which leaves his tetherless surrogates free to roam the policy landscape. An even deeper problem is that standard-issue Republican economic policy has run out of plausible mantras. The ritual extolling of markets and denigration of government make no sense at a moment when a conservative Republican administration is rushing to save the markets through governmental intervention.