I have no idea what David Brooks means when he calls the Obama campaign the “champion of policy change” and the McCain’s campaign “the champion of systemic change”:

Now the campaign has become a battle between two different definitions of change. The Obama camp has become the champion of policy change — after eight years of failed Bush-McCain policies, it is time for different, Democratic ones. The McCain campaign is the champion of systemic change — after two decades of bickering and self-dealing, its time to shake up the whole system in order to get things done.

The Obama change is more responsible and specific, but it has all the weirdness of a Brookings Institution report. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) The McCain promise of change is comprehensive and vehement, though it’s hard to know how it would actually work in office.

How can a promise of “systemic change” be “comprehensive” if Brooks can’t even define what it means or how it would work? What does “systemic change” mean if it’s not about policy? Other than his quixotic campaign against earmarks (which consume a tiny part of the federal budget), it’s not clear that McCain would change much of anything about the “system.”

In reality, the way “policy change” and “systemic change” typically happen is that party control of the presidency changes or the balance of power shifts in Congress. Contra Brooks, electing McCain to face a Democratic Congress will largely preserve the status quo, not change it. (The most likely exception, of course, is foreign policy, where the president has more latitude to act unilaterally.)