McChange

The constant whining from the press is like a gnat in your ear: "McCain stole Obama's Change message!" But it brings the issue front and center: Which man is best equipped to usher in "change"?

First off, lets drop the kick-butt, take names fantasy. We may relish the vision of a muscular Obama or an angry McCain swinging senators and lobbyists around by their expensive neckties, or publicly shaming them on national TV, but that's just not going to happen.

The entrenched DC powers are a bipartisan collection of moneyed backscratchers and button-holers who do a lot of winking and nodding. They also know how to circle the wagons. All that "Republican versus Democrat" stuff is just for the TV cameras. Both parties are branches of the same powerful DC tribe, and they all subscribe to a modified version of that old Arab saying:

I against my party; I and my party against the opposition party; I and my party and the opposition party against the reformers.

Given this entrenched environment, is it realistic to to expect a 46 year old newbie senator to change anything more important than which way the toilet paper is hung in the president's private bathroom? A quick review of the last two presidencies doesn't provide much hope.

Washington outsider Bill Clinton, elected with 43% of the vote, was impotent (politically!) until the Republicans took over congress. History had ended, so he jumped on their bandwagon. They in turn acceded to some of his demands, and taxes got lowered, NAFTA was passed, welfare as we know if was ended and economic good times rolled. The public voted for change, and the president and Congress were more than happy to give it to them.

DC outsider George Bush used the bully pulpit, or plain old bullying, to get his way on defense and security issues. But most of his changes bloated government; more like something a Democrat would do. Anyway, congress had retrenched by then. The 24/7 Bush-Pelosi-Reid cage match has shown that confrontation does not produce positive change.

Here's how real change can happen: President McCain invites his old Democrat cronies to the White House and says "Look Teddy, we've got to make some big changes here and bring government under control. I need your help. What's it gonna take, Diane, Russ?" Don't worry, he'll invite some Republicans too.

And the bartering goes back and forth, nobody's sacred cow gets gored too badly, and everybody claims credit and runs on it the next election cycle. Some little pigs will get stuck here and there, and they'll squeal loudly as they go down, their defenders crying foul. There will be the rare ugly brute force takedown, but for the most part, the pain and glory will be shared by all because Mac knows how to play these games and he has the deep bipartisan connections to do it.