On Friday, the campaign of John McCain continued its game of "he loves me, he loves me not" with the federal budget deficit. His chief economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin pledged McCain would implement a balanced budget "by the end of his first term." Of course, that was a reversal of Holtz-Eakin's proclaimed target in April of 2017. And needless to say, that represented an abandonment of McCain's February promise to end the red ink by 2012.
As ThinkProgress detailed, according to Holtz-Eakin McCain's on-again/off-again first-term balanced budget is apparently on again. During an interview with Bloomberg, the April renunciation of McCain's deficit reduction pledge is no longer operative:

Holtz-Eakin...defended McCain's tax plans, which include extending Bush's tax cuts, reducing the corporate tax rate and repealing the alternative-minimum tax. McCain would offset those cuts by reexamining the entire federal budget and vetoing earmarks to reduce spending. "That plan, when appropriately phased in, as it has always been intended to be, will bring the budget to balance by the end of his first term,' he said.

All of which serves to bring John McCain's 360 on the deficit full circle. Before abandoning his balanced budget pledge during a Pittsburgh address in April, McCain had made it a feature on the campaign trail. For example, during a February 15th rally in La Crosse, Wisconsin, "McCain promised he'd offer a balanced budget by the end of his first term." He told the audience that he could end the red ink by 2012:

"I've got to give you some straight talk: I doubt, given the deficits we're running, that I can propose a balanced budget in the first year. But that's my goal. It has to be our goal, because we're mortgaging these young people's future."

Alas, McCain's life as a deficit hawk was a short and unhappy one.
Even as Mr. Straight Talk was promising a 2012 end date for the budget deficit, his top economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin was reading from a different script, instead targeting the end of a McCain second term in 2017. And he should know. A month later, Holtz-Eakin, an architect of the McCain tax plan, admitted, "It will make deficits expand up front, no question." Just a day before McCain's April 15th economic address, Holtz-Eakin previewed the campaign's new position on balancing the budget:

"I would like the next president not to talk about deficit reduction."

For good reason. During an April 9th appearance at a Westport, Connecticut investment firm, McCain was grilled over his fuzzy math:

"Basically, which is it?" the man asked Mr. McCain. "Straight talk: Do you want to raise taxes, cut entitlement spending, cut defense spending, or have a deficit?"

McCain dutifully cited his idol Ronald Reagan as proivding the answer. Conveniently ignoring the fact that Reagan himself raised taxes three times and bequeathed a $300 billion deficit to his successor, McCain argued:

"That was when Ronald Reagan came to office in 1980. And so what did we do? We didn't raise taxes, and we didn't cut entitlements."

Of course, the McCain tax plan's budget-busting largesse to the wealthiest Americans would make Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush alike blush. As ThinkProgress meticulously detailed in late March, McCain has thrown budgetary caution to the wind:"

Our analysis suggests that the McCain plan shares five key characteristics of Bush policies. First, it is enormously expensive, costing more than $2 trillion over the next decade and essentially doubling the Bush tax cuts. Second, the McCain plan would predominantly benefit the most fortunate taxpayers, offering two new massive tax cuts for corporations and delivering 58 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The Bush tax cuts provide 31 percent of their benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.
Third, the McCain tax plan continues the shift of the tax burden from investment income onto earned income. Fourth, the plan not only fails to address current tax shelter problems in the tax code but in fact will lead to increased sheltering. Fifth, McCain cannot pay for his tax cuts without massive reductions in Social Security, Medicare, or other key programs that benefit the vast majority of Americans.

(Despite the certainty that McCain would follow in the footsteps of George W. Bush's broken 2004 promise to halve the budget deficit by 2009, Holtz-Eakin amazingly declared Friday that Barack Obama would be like President Bush on the economy. That prompted the crypt-keeper of conservatism Robert Novak to proclaim, "That is the silliest thing I have ever heard! And I won't even dignify how stupid it is.")
Apparently, that sea of red ink and the impossibility of President McCain balancing the budget are no barrier to returning to his old deficit slashing pledge. Appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews in April, John McCain explained his first about-face on a first-term balanced budget by pleading, "economic conditions are reversed." But with gas now at $4 a gallon, oil approaching $150 a barrel, unemployment catapulting to 5.5% and record numbers of home foreclosures, economic conditions have only gotten worse.
So much for straight talk from the supposed maverick.