"serious questions about whether McCain could get there"? I'm sure you must know that the only way to get there would be through impossibly huge cuts in entitlements, which McCain would never come out and say he favors. If that's what he would do--and I'm guessing that's what you must mean when you say you have "some idea of where he is headed"--don't you think he should tell Americans he's planning to slash these programs? The forum was explicitly about tax policy, so it seems unfair to say that Goolsbee didn't talk enough about spending for your tastes. He was the one who suggested a separate forum on spending. I didn't hear him ducking the question on spending--he just said that on the spot he couldn't give a figure for the size of the deficit projected under the Obama proposals, other than to say the deficit would be lower, in nominal terms than in 2009. I've written my take on the forum at the Economists for Obama blog: http://econ4obama.blogspot.com/