Pay no attention to the economic policy behind the curtain

I have to agree with Kevin Drum that John McCain's saying that terrorism is the gravest long-term threat to the US economy is pretty silly. For starters, it's non-responsive; in that sense, death by asteroid is probably the gravest long-term threat to the US economy, but that's not really very helpful in telling me what someone's domestic policy is going to be like. But more than that, it's not even vaguely true. Terrorism is just not an existential threat to the United States, even in the very unlikely event that a terrorist group gets a nuke. I can think of half a dozen more realistic candidates for causing mass economic suffering, like energy shortages, central bank malfeasance, environmental degradation of the food or water supply, resurgent global economic nationalism, or good old-fashioned overregulation. This is just an attempt to wave the bloody shirt and thereby avoid discussions of his economic policies. What makes this especially galling is that he has some pretty okay things to say about issues like trade.