He's in Ohio today arguing that free trade can rescue depressed steel towns:
"The biggest problem is not so much
what's happened with free trade, but our inability to adjust to a new
world economy," McCain said during a town hall-style meeting at
Youngstown State University.
"I think the answer is to
understand that, free trade or not, we are in an information and
technology revolution," he said. "So we want people to be part of that
revolution, and we've got to be part of that new economy, rather than
try to cling to an old economy."
McCain, on a weeklong tour of
"forgotten" places where people are struggling with poverty and job
losses, made a stop at a shuttered steel fabricating plant in
Youngstown with broken-out windows and a crumbling, weed-strewn parking
lot.
There he criticized Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and
Barack Obama for saying, when they campaigned in the Ohio primary last
month, that they would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA....
"Protectionism and isolationism have never worked in American history," McCain said.
On the one hand you have to admire McCain's refusal to pander. On the other you have to wonder if he's commiting electoral suicide.
P.S. He also told voters in Youngstown that their city can bounce back from the depths of hopelessness, just like his primary candidacy. I'm sure that cheered up the unemployed steel guys.
--Michael Crowley