McCain's winning message for the fall

Dan Balz:

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McCain signaled a hard-fought fall campaign against either Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama based on conservative principles and built around his national security credentials and reputation as an opponent of wasteful government spending.

He presented his support for President Bush's troop increase in Iraq as a badge of honor and charged that his opponents would recklessly adopt a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from the conflict without regard for the "profound human calamity" and heightened danger to U.S. security that he said would ensue.

"Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences," he said. "This one will not be. We are arguing about hugely consequential things. Whomever the Democrats nominate, they would govern this country in a way that will, in my opinion, take this country backward."

McCain was especially stern in his criticism of Clinton and Obama on national security, asserting that neither fully recognizes the threat of an Iran with nuclear ambitions and that both will concede to critics of the United States that the nation's actions in its own defense have helped stir Islamic radicalism.

Saying Clinton's and Obama's resolve to combat those threats "will be as flawed as their judgment" about what brought about the threats, he said, "I intend to defeat that threat by staying on offense and by marshaling every relevant agency of our government, and our allies, in the urgent necessity of defending the values, virtues and security of free people against those who despise all that is good about us."

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McCain will also run on a biography that has shown character and courage and a willingness to buck convention, and he initially matches up well against both Clinton and Obama, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. He holds a statistically insignificant lead over Clinton and trails Obama by a similarly insignificant margin. The poll suggests that McCain will have solid support from the Republican Party while also appealing to critically important independent voters.

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McCain must stick to the themes that unite his party's conservative base and hammer the Democrats where they are weakest and most wrong. He will also have to persuade many voters that they have been wrong about the war too by arguing the importance of winning and the peace that will come from victory against the continue war that will come from retreat. The Democrats' pledge to end the war is an illusory promise, because, until defeated the enemy has a voice in when the war will end. A retreat at this point will give him a victory he has not earned and waste an opportunity to win.

McCain is stressing the two points for which he can get a mandate. He better stay on that message if he wants conservative support.