McCain’s success as a politician has owed in large part to his being a less boring, less conventional, more authentic candidate than his competitors. His problem in this year’s general election is that, at least as his candidacy is currently constituted, he won’t have that advantage.

McCain may seem like a bastion of integrity when he’s squaring off with someone like Mitt Romney, but he seems ordinary compared with Obama. Thus, there are only two ways McCain can win in the fall:

(1) A dramatic Obama mistake or revelation.

(2) McCain can beat Obama — who will run a high-road campaign — by running an ultra-high-road campaign of historic proportions.

To do the latter, it has to be about more than civility. He must do more than eschew personal attacks. McCain has to take at least three risky, dramatic, historic policy positions that appeal to Americans’ common sense and desire for change.

He has to take suicide positions. That is, the kind of policy positions that pundits always refer to as “political suicide.”

Below is a menu of his choices. Remember, though, that to win, he has to select at least three from the menu and advocate forcefully for those policies. One or two won’t be enough to overcome Obama’s advantages.

• Eliminate the payroll tax and pay for it with a federal sales tax on non-food purchases. This is the so-called “fair tax” that Huckabee supported. The details of implementation can be argued, but clearly the idea appeals to common sense. There is nothing about it that is inconsistent with foundational Republican ideology. That is, the ideology that most prominent Republicans have, by now, forgotten or chosen to ignore. Meanwhile, this tax shift would be of greatest benefit to those on the lower end of the pay scale, which would help complicate arguments that Republicans are all about helping the rich.
• Support gay marriage. Eventually most Republicans will advocate for legally recognizing gay marriages (and not just civil unions). They will have to do so in order for their party to survive, given how much support the idea enjoys among those under 40. McCain needs to speed up the clock on this transition. He can make a strong case that allowing gays to marry is consistent with Republicans’ (supposed) dislike of government intrusion and social engineering. Conservatives love to say that government shouldn’t pick winners and losers in the marketplace. Why then should it attempt to decide which family/social/romantic situations win and lose?
• Support a revenue-neutral carbon tax to combat global warming. This is everyone’s favorite suicide position. The idea somehow enjoys near universal approval from those who don’t have an obvious financial stake in taking carbon out of the ground or trees and putting it in the air. And yet the same people who love the idea always point out that it will never happen. In a revenue-neutral carbon tax, all money collected is returned to taxpayers in the form of lower income taxes. Again, the details of implementation are always subject to debate, but the great thing about running for president is that you can gloss over those details, especially when the real news is that you are backing an idea that had previously been a third rail.
• Overhaul federal farm subsidies. There are numerous ways to justify dramatically cutting back on farm subsidies. There is the environmental argument. The fairness argument. The free trade argument. Combating world hunger. Etc. Conveniently enough, it’s another idea that squares perfectly with the ideology that many individual Republicans still subscribe to, even if that ideology is no longer in evidence in the aggregate.
• Immediately end all subsidies for mature fossil fuel industries. It may seem Naderesque, as may some of the other items on the menu, but channeling Nader is McCain’s best hope. Again, it’s a perfectly Republican idea.
• Hire more teachers and give a one-time across-the-board raise to all teachers. A dramatic increase in the number of public school teachers will cost money. It will also make the job a more desirable one, due to smaller average class sizes. As things stand, you almost have to have a martyr complex to be a public school teacher. McCain can argue that for our educational system to improve, the teaching job has to be more desirable and class sizes have to diminish. There’s nothing especially Republican or Democrat about the idea, but McCain can argue that it’s an investment that will pay off, and something we must do to be competitive globally. He can also point out that such a policy would also pave the way toward firing lower-performing teachers both by increasing the size of the talent pool and by winning concessions from unions on rules that make it harder to fire teachers. McCain’s 20/20 plan: an immediate, across-the-board 20% pay increase for all teachers and a 20% increase in the total number of public school teachers. Some Republicans will call it a step away from the privatization of education, but resisting that argument will afford McCain a further opportunity to show his independence from current party orthodoxy.
• Decriminalize marijuana possession and let everyone out of jail whose incarceration is due only to possession. For those serving time for a combination of convictions, trim off the portion of their sentence attributable to possession. A big money-saver, and just the kind of political suicide Republicans desperately need. It should be part of a broader policy aimed at dramatically decreasing the prison population by immediately scaling up pilot programs that have been successful at the local/state level.
• Increase minimum wage and index it to inflation. Start at $10/hour. Forty years ago the inflation-adjusted minimum wage was about $9.50/hour. We can do a little better than our previous best, McCain will say. Coupled with elimination of the payroll tax, this policy will greatly increase earning power at the bottom of the pay scale and will help the economy far more than it hurts.

Taking positions like these, some of which vary from McCain’s existing positions, would open him to charges of being a flip-flopper. But assuming he announces all three (or more) positions in concert, the response would be so overwhelmingly positive as to inoculate him from the flip-flopper charge.

“I won my party’s primary and I’m running for president,” McCain will say. “I’ve been overshadowed by the Democratic candidate, who is going to raise way more money than me, and I have nothing to lose by taking some common sense positions that may offend some people, but that I think will help the country and will also be good for my party. If I’ve changed my mind on some things, big deal. I’m telling people what my positions are now, and I’m committing to upholding these positions as president. You can judge whether I’m sincere.”

McCain can greatly increase the impact by providing evidence that, as president, he will be able to make the policies a reality. He can do this by getting unlikely (conservative) Republican allies, and also Democrats, to sign on in support of his positions. That will be his most difficult task, but some Republicans may be motivated by self-preservation and Democrats will not want McCain to outdo them on issues like the environment and education.