Dr Phil vs Dr No

OK, so here it goes with the first post… It seems John McCain is hellbent on going tit for tat with the Obama campaign on blunders. “You let a lobbyist into your campaign?” “I’ll staff my entire campaign with lobbyists.” “You see me a Jeremiah Wright?” “I’ll raise you a John Hagee!” And I’m sure you remember when Obama used an unfortunate choice of words to say that people in the Midwest are frustrated by their economic situation. Well, John McCain’s chief economic adviser, former Texas Senator-now-lobbyist-for-UBS Phil Gramm topped that insult.

From the Washington Times:

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

So, if we are to get this straight, we have nothing to worry about, right? That’s comforting news coming from the guy who was being paid to lobby Congress on behalf of the big mortgage lenders. After all, he was one of the geniuses that helped create the foreclosure crisis. And while it is true that exports are up, is has a lot to do with the dollar being in the crapper, making it cheaper for foreign countries to import our goods, but more expensive for us to do the same.

U.S. Dollar to Euro Exchange Rate

…Yeah, I’m sure folks in places like Cleveland and Pittsburgh took that one real well Senator Sellout.

Of course John McCain responded with his trademark wit, saying that Gramm would be in line for the ambassadorship to Belarus after comments like that. And while I assume that’s all well and good, if McCain says he’s not an economic expert, then touts the advisers he surrounds himself with, then distances himself from them, what are we to believe?