John McCain: The Economically Irresponsible American President that Americans Who Didn’ Think Bush Was Irresponsible Enough Have Been Waiting For

Yglesias is right that McCain’s reliance on the advice of Phil Gramm shows that the straight-talking maverick just doesn’t care about economic policy. The fact that Gramm equipped the Glass-Steagall Act with concrete shoes is certainly damning enough; it would be analogous, I think, to asking for Douglas Feith’s advice in scaling the difficult crannies of foreign policy.

Don’t forget, of course, that Gramm was a footsoldier in the Enron Revolution, setting the tables for the catastrophe that really should have spurred a national conversation about bringing back the gallows for corporate felons. Wendy Gramm, while at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, carved out a regulatory exemption for Enron in 1992 before resigning to work for the company until 1998. All the while, Enron continued donating to Gramm’s political campaigns as well as to several hundred other members of Congress. In December 2000, Gramm co-sponsored a recycled deregulatory bill that was inserted into an appropriations bill as a rider; it passed, Clinton signed it, and the the rest is history.

Ordinarily, this is the sort of association that might be disastrous for a presidential campaign, but I’m given to understand that Barack Obama consorts with Angry, Crazed Negroes, so I expect there will be other things for the press to discuss while they’re eating Butterfingers on the Straight Talk Express.