With Advisers Like These . . . .

by Steve Soto

We already know John McCain doesn’t deal with personnel problems well, which is an indication that a McCain administration would be a real mess. It’s a reflection of his poor judgment that he feels comfortable having a senior campaign team made up of lobbyists who put private gain ahead of public interest and helped steer this country into a ditch. And this can come back and bite you in the ass.

McCain was already having an uphill battle convincing voters he knew enough about the economy to deal with the devastation caused by eight years of Bush/Cheney wreckage. But after Phil Gramm's Scud into the McCain ammunition dump, McCain will be unable to make any case at all on the economy as long as he keeps Gramm aboard.

Sen. John McCain ventured to an auto-parts supplier in this hard-hit Detroit suburb to express sympathy for those affected by Michigan's economic malaise and to talk up his ideas for creating jobs in the region.

But a day after a top McCain economic adviser dismissed the nation's struggles as a "mental recession," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's message landed with a thud, as workers sat in stony silence.

McCain was already running into a stiff headwind because of an ailing economy, and his task only became tougher after former senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) suggested that the United States has "become a nation of whiners."

Way to go Phil!

Gramm, who has helped shape McCain's presidential campaign and is a close friend of the candidate, expressed no regret on Thursday for the comments he made in an interview with the Washington Times, saying: "I'm not going to retract any of it. Every word I said was true." But the McCain campaign quickly shifted into damage-control mode, distancing the candidate from his friend's assessment.

And it's not like McCain was scoring points anyway with the masses on the economy before.

But the 100 or so in the crowd sat on their hands throughout most of McCain's speech, especially during his remarks about the need for free trade -- a policy that is generally reviled in manufacturing areas. The first question McCain received was from a free-trade critic, who told the candidate that "what we need to do is control some of those trade issues going on. What we want is fair trade."

Obama correctly capitalized on the Gramm bomb, but in Virginia, not the rust belt. If I were running the campaign, I would use the next ten days to run Obama and Hillary through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Missouri to hammer McCain on the economy to cement in a narrative that would sink him for the fall campaign. If McCain wants to run as a champion of free trade at a time recent polls found NAFTA very unpopular, and at a time when his advisors with corporate bank accounts think economic pain is largely psychological, then Team Obama needs to take advantage of this opportunity and go for a kill now.

But that's just me.