A Nation of Whiners - Day 2
"I respect no one more in America on issue of economics than I do Phil Gramm." - John McCain
As noted yesterday, the immediate response by the McCain campaign was to rush to Phil Gramm's defense after he called America "a Nation of Whiners" for complaining about the economic downturn and how it's affecting our lives every day. Then, later in the day when it became clear this wasn't going away, McCain changed his tune, arguing instead that Gramm didn't "speak for him."
The problem, of course, was that at the moment he had been "speaking for him at a meeting of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board."
But more importantly, this isn't just any advisor, and this isn't just any issue. This is his top and most trusted economic advisor. And perhaps even more significantly, as one TPM reader put it, this is about the fundamental state of the US economy -- from which the economic policy proposals would presumably flow from. If there were no problems, and we're all just "a Nation of Whiners," then that'd completely change solutions that are necessary.
It's exactly that viewpoint which informs McCain's (incorrect) views that our problems are simply "psychological" -- that we're not really having difficulties, we just think we are. It's more than just McCain's view of the economic landscape; it's the reason he's not serious about addressing these issues.
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