22 Days Out: OK, Keeping Throwing Things At the Wall Until One of Them Isn't Perceived as Erratic...

Jesse Lee is the Online Rapid Response Manager for the DNC, this is a daily update on the day's messaging.

Bill Kristol tells us this morning that "The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic." His solution to this perception of erraticism? Double down on the erraticism: "It's time for John McCain to fire his campaign... What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over."

That hardly seems like the answer (and McCain campaign spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer seemed to take it a bit personally ), but one can sympathize with Kristol's frustration. Over the past few days we've been treated to not one , but two Politico exclusives granted by the McCain campaign about the spectacular, awe-inspiring new economic policies coming down the pike. Center stage was to be, wait for it, drum roll, pull the curtain.... Tax cuts for the rich! Ta da! And then there were apparently to be a few more pulled out of a hat with 35 or so ideas in it, possibly with some involvement of a dart board and a Heritage Foundation policy index.

But sadly, it was not to be.

New York Times : "No New Economic Proposal Expected From McCain... 'We do not have any immediate plans to announce any policy proposals outside of the proposals that John McCain has announced, and the certain proposals that would result as economic news continues to come our way,' a campaign spokesman, Tucker Bounds, said. Mr. McCain's policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said, 'I have no comment on anything, to anybody.' ... By nearly all accounts and in recent polls, Mr. Obama has received higher marks for projecting calm and consistency while Mr. McCain has been criticized as flailing. 'At this point I don't think McCain can say anything on the economy that will sound credible,' said Bruce Bartlett, a former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan and President George Bush."

Ok, anybody got any other ideas? Ok I got one, I got one, how about you give a speech, and in the speech you say a bunch of nasty lies about Obama?!?

Politico : "Three weeks before Election Day, John McCain on Monday is unveiling what his aides call a more forceful new stump speech in which he portrays himself as a scrappy fighter on the comeback trail... Allies are calling this 'hitting the 'reset' button' on the campaign, with McCain re-emerging after a long Sunday strategy session with a feisty tack that uses candor and humor, at a time when his rallies have become known for raucous rage and clumsy attacks. But it's more like hitting the panic button."

Joe Biden was out on the stump and cut John McCain off at the pass: "Both Senator Obama and John McCain are giving big speeches today. You'll read about it in the press. You'll go home and turn on CNN and the other news stations and you're going to hear that each gave a major speech today... Barack is going to make a major speech on economic policy, it's going to further outline what he's going to do and how he's going to deal with it. But as you look at least the excerpts that are released so far, it looks like John McCain's entire speech will be attack -- attack, attack, attack. Now, look, by contrast, it seems that it couldn't be clearer to me what's going on here. John McCain wants to attack Barack Obama , Barack Obama wants to tackle the problems that face America today." He went on to talk about McCain's ongoing erraticism:

Oh, and aside from the spanking new strategy of attacking Obama, for good measure throw something in the speech about how you never liked that Bush guy anyway:

McCain : "We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change."

That's a good one, now watch this Bush ad in 2004 featuring John McCain who spent the entire election season stumping for him based on his "leadership":