McCain's Nuclear Veep Option

There is a bold move that John McCain can make that will kick the campaign up to a completely different level, and steal a march on Barack Obama in the "transformational" category, blowing away all the current electoral math while simultaneously risking the complete destruction of the Republican Party.

Sound fun to you?

After coasting downhill while the Democrats settled that primary thing, McCain's campaign is now stuck in neutral. As he and his handlers try and grind their way into first gear, they're double-clutching on message and visuals. Trying to gain traction against the zippy Obama machine, they've thrown foreign policy up as a roadblock. But Obama is far more maneuverable on that issue, as McCain has George Bush in the back seat, and a trailer-load of hawkish votes hitched on behind.

The Straight Talk Express is a lumbering lemon.

The only game-changing move that McCain can make now is to completely cut loose of his base, fully take up the mantle of maverick, and try to return to the position he held as the pre-eminent pragmatist prior to 2000. That means throwing out the electoral map that Nixon designed with his Southern Strategy and Silent Majority and running a campaign based completely on the ideals of the man he claims as hero: Barry Goldwater.

Eschewing the sanctimonious patriotism and patriotic sanctimony of the Far Right, McCain should embrace Goldwater's social libertarianism and fight the ideological battle with Obama for the middle-of-the-road middle class.

And the bold move he can make to signify this change? Choose Christine Todd Whitman as his running mate.

There are a couple of tough negatives associated with Whitman, the most obvious stemming from her claims as EPA head about the cleanliness and safety of the air around the demolished World Trade Center. But in her defense, a defense that is sure to play well, Whitman says that she was lied to by Bush. That's not just plausible, that is likely.

She was brought into the Bush Administration as a former Nixon staffer and protege of Donald Rumsfeld. But she also quit Bush's EPA after having a global-warming report dismissed by the White House, and in protest over Dick Cheney's plan to gut pollution standards.

Whitman has written a book (It's My Party, Too) and started a PAC based on taking the Republican Party back from the Far Right. She eschews the Nixon-Atwater-Rove electoral model and decries the "Rightward lurch" of the Party under Bush.

So she has the anti-Bush chops that people are longing for in this election.

With deep roots in New Jersey as a former Governor and scion of two political families there, she could deliver a state that Republicans are eying with interest and Democrats with concern. With deep pockets from New York through her husband, she can self-fund her half of the campaign.

Her Whitman Strategy Group is working on environmental and energy policy, especially as regards nuclear power. She believes that it is time for the US to look again at nuclear power as the logical emissions-free alternative to combat global warming.

Combined with her record in NJ and some of her record at the EPA, this gives her a formidable green resume that voters could warm to.

And, of course, she is a 60-something, centrist, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-defense woman with over 35 years of political experience. Sound familiar?

For a huge chunk of Hillary's 18 million, Christie Whitman could be the alternative they've been looking for.

Of course, McCain would find it immensely difficult to blaze a trail away from the path he has hewn since 2000, when he rolled over and let Bush rub his tummy. He's been a reliable lap dog ever since. And he would run a HUGE risk of losing in a landslide if he tries to beat Obama at his own game.

But he's going to lose anyway, and if he truly wanted to change the way politics is played in America and finally break the grip of those he called "the agents of intolerance" before he pandered back to them, McCain should go back to being the maverick he once was, stand up for those things he knows to be right, and raise the political discourse in this country once and for all.

Choosing Christine Todd Whitman as his running mate would be the coup-de-grace to Bushism, and free McCain and America to join Obama on a higher plane.