In his latest column for the New York Times, neoconservative William Kristol argues that John McCain should fire his entire campaign staff. After all, Kristol argues, the senator from Arizona is way behind in the polls and needs a radical gama changer. If he does nothing, he will lose.

In other words: what would be a tremendous risk for a candidate normally, is a necessary one to take for McCain.

“He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed,” Kristol writes.

“He may be anyway. Bush is unpopular. The media is hostile. The financial meltdown has made things tougher. Maybe the situation is hopeless — and if it is, then nothing McCain or his campaign does matters.”

But, he argues, “I’m not convinced by such claims of inevitability. McCain isn’t Bush. The media isn’t all-powerful. And the economic crisis still presents an opportunity to show leadership.”

The economic crisis does most certainly present an opportunity to show leadership, but one has to wonder whether firing his entire staff will boost Americans’ confidence in McCain’s leadership abilities. Judging by the history of successful campaign, I would say probably not. If he would have fired his entire staff 3 months ago, it might have worked for McCain but now? So close before the elections? It would simply be interpreted as a sign that McCain is panicking and unable to surround himself with knowledgeable individuals.

“What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads — they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time,” Kristol writes.

Again, this would be a good idea if he would have done this months ago. Not today. If McCain wants to fight Obama successfully, he should not want to ‘try over.’ There is simply now time for that. Rather, McCain should streamline his campaign, get everyone on the staff active and hopeful, and come up with a way to present himself in a manner that appeals to voters with the help of his current staff, who are professionals after all. They can change their approach. What was missing from the McCain campaign was vision. If McCain has the vision, he will have three weeks to get his act together, and his campaign’s, and present himself as the best leader for America during times of crisis.

Rather than another gimmick, McCain has to make the economy, his main weakness, his strength. This means that he will have to surround himself now by leading economists. He should get a bunch of leading economists and other experts to back him. He should put them in a room for three days, pay them well obviously, and the end result has to be a comprehensive economic plan. After that, McCain will have to present that plan to voters and talk about it whenever the opportunity arrises, and even when it does not.

McCain does not need to pull any new gimmicks. Rather, he should appear calm and confident, even when the polls tell him he is in trouble. One of the most appealing things about Obama is that he is always calm. He looks in charge, McCain does not. McCain seems to be a victim of circumstances, whereas Obama presents himself as if he creates circumstances. He is not visibly bothered when events take a turn for the worse. Obama remains calm and confident.

McCain should do the same, but he should then do something extra: present a major economic plan, that has the backing of leading economists. Next he should go to voters, explain his plan to them, and ask them for their support.

This will distinguish him Obama, and it will give people something positive to talk about.