The Wall Street Journal‘s Kimberly Strassel goes to town debunking Barack Obama’s “magic tricks.” On the economy:

[T]he Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he’ll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation’s biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It’s simple, really. He has a wand.

And on foreign policy:

And for tonight’s finale, the Great Obama will uphold America’s “moral” obligation to “stop genocide” by abandoning Iraq! While teleported to the region, he will simultaneously convince Iranian leaders to peacefully abandon their nuclear pursuits (even as he does not sit down with them), fix Afghanistan with a strategy that does not resemble the Iraqi surge, and (drumroll!) pull Osama bin Laden out of his hat!

Strassel takes John McCain to task because he “has so admirably restrained himself from running up on stage to debunk any of these illusions and spoil everyone’s fun” and because, at the last debate, despite “some pretty big openings,” he didn’t dismantle the Obama illusions.

There is a serious point here: why hasn’t the McCain camp been better at debunking Obama’s domestic and foreign policy prescriptions? The overriding image of the economy is meltdown has drowned out much of the message. But it is fair criticism, I think, that McCain himself has not made the most of the debates to take the attack directly to Obama. Certainly one need not get heated or personal to make the point repeatedly, doggedly, and forcefully that Obama is, in effect, peddling snake oil to a very sick patient. It is odd, in that McCain seemed quite capable of taking on his opponents in the GOP debates. And in interviews and speeches, he has, at times, voiced many of the arguments Strassel sets forth.

It is unclear whether this is a failure of will, execution, or strategy. But quite apart from the Ayers-Rezko-ACORN connections, there is a wealth of material at McCain’s disposal. The last opportunity to do this the final debate next week. He may have already frittered away opportunities, but there is one final setting. Unless McCain can make a passionate and convincing case that Obama is not just “risky” on character and judgment, but badly misguided on policy as well, the voters will decide he’s the best shot they have for changing course and arresting the economic chaos played out before them. Perhaps they already have.