As the week progressed, John McCain–on both tactics and substance–steadily improved. His speech in Green Bay today was smart on a few fronts.

First, he has figured out how to make a financial crisis into an ethics scandal while casting his opponent as a villain. In his analysis Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae play a major role:

Two years ago, I called for reform of this corruption at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress did nothing. The Administration did nothing. Senator Obama did nothing, and actually profited from this system of abuse and scandal. While Fannie and Freddie were working to keep Congress away from their house of cards, Senator Obama was taking their money. He got more, in fact, than any other member of Congress, except for the Democratic chairmen of the committee that oversees them. And while Fannie Mae was betraying the public trust, somehow its former CEO had managed to gain my opponent’s trust to the point that Senator Obama actually put him in charge of his vice presidential search.

Second, McCain laid out a series of policy steps, some of which are generic (e.g. more transparency and a new regulatory system) but some some which are more specific than anything his opponent has come up with–e.g. a Mortgage and Financial Institutions Trust. Most promisingly, he has this to say:

[T]he Federal Reserve should get back to its core business of responsibly managing our money supply and inflation. It needs to get out of the business of bailouts. The Fed needs to return to protecting the purchasing power of the dollar. A strong dollar will reduce energy and food prices. It will stimulate sustainable economic growth and get this economy moving again.

That is likely to hearten fiscal conservatives–those who were looking for leadership on this issue will be pleased indeed.

And then McCain laid out his tax and energy plans with more brevity and clarity than we have seen:

I will give every family a $5,000 credit to buy their own health insurance policy and let them chose their own doctor. This will make insurance affordable to every American. I will double the child exemption from $3,500 to $7,000 to help families pay for the rising cost of living. Under my plan, a married couple with two children making $35,000 will get $5,000 to pay for health insurance and additional medical expenses. This family would get another $1,050 from my child exemption. That adds up to over $6,000. That is a lot more than what any hardworking middle class family, gets under the Obama plan. Business taxes will be cut from the second highest in the world at 35 percent to 25 percent.

The real issue for McCain is whether the message communicated here, not just the substance, but the impression of a decisive leader with a defined gameplan (and of his opponent as part of the culture of corrupt self-dealing and an advocate of higher taxes) can gain traction. The media din certainly is loud. His real opportunity is the debate next week, when his audience will be huge and there will be no media filter. He may not get another such chance.