So John McCain gave a speech this morning wherein he delineated his vision of the United States at the end of his first term in 2013. The good news: Victory in Iraq and Osama bin Laden captured or killed; the bad news: A continued threat from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

CNN called McCain’s speech “unusual—and somewhat risky—in that it laid out benchmarks on which he could be judged.”

“It certainly was an ambitious speech,” said Bill Schneider, a CNN senior political analyst, noting that many of the things McCain mentioned will be “very tough things for a president to accomplish.”

“But perhaps the key point that he made was the tone and tenor of his presidency when he said near the end of his speech, ‘If I’m elected president, the era of the permanent campaign will end. The era of problem solving will begin,’ “ Schneider said.

Other milestones McCain mentioned, according to CNN:

Whew. That’s quite a list. But wait! There’s more!

Here’s a look at the ad based on the speech:

I agree that this is an interesting approach for McCain to take. It seems that he is trying to prove that Obama isn’t the only one with vision. But while it’s helpful to understand candidates’ ideas about where they want to take the country, it’s more important to know how they plan to get there—and that’s especially true when the president doesn’t get much help from his (or her) party in Congress. The only question facing the NRCC this year is how many seats it will actually lose in the House, so a President McCain—and his agenda—would pretty much be on his own on the Hill. That’s my problem with this: McCain doesn’t give us any idea how he would deal with a hostile House and an obstinate Senate.

He does a good job of playing up the destination. But even the best destination is useless if you don’t have a road map to get there.