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Phil Gramm Resigns from McCain Campaign. Finally.

Posted by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Deputy Managing Editor, Columnist in Economy, Politics.
Jul 18th, 2008 | Comments

More likely pushed out I imagine, and allowed to resign to save face.

What damage Phil Gramm did to Senator McCain’s campaign, with Gramm’s archaic and out of touch epithets about American families who struggle so with sudden and huge inflation regarding food, transportation, ARMs, health costs… a ‘perfect mess of an economic storm– while Gramm is a coddled multimillionaire and has NEVER gone without anything even remotely related to stapes and necessities. Never.

Gramm was both the co-chair of McCain’s campaign, as well as his “economics” adviser. Why or how Gramm put himself ahead of Senator McCain’s best interests by grandstanding last week and trying to shame and ridicule Americans who suffer… calling them ‘whiners– Why Gramm went on blathering like some doddering relic waving his cane and declaiming the recession was ‘all mental’ — we can only guess.

But it stands out in bright red that the ego inflation of a personality that does such things thoughtlessly when so very much is at stake, not only sees those who suffer as a joke, rather than as worthy human beings, but also that his impulse control was shot. Blurting out whatever he feels like saying seems Gramm’s highest priority, rather than protecting his candidate’s HONOR as a visionary and compassionate person who is currently being critically evaluated and judged by potential voters…

Senator McCain is already bucking a rain of arrows about being ‘old’ (he is older, but certainly not ‘old’…. and likely carries the kinds of wisdom that can only come from living long) and being old fashioned… (if having certain proprieties is old fashioned, that may be a good thing). He needs Phil Gramm like a duck needs a raincoat. He needs Gramm like St. Sebastian needs a few more arrows.

If Reverend Wright was Obama’s “crazy uncle,” for certain Gramm with his cross-eyed cannon volley straight through the side of Senator McCain’s ship of state, is McCain’s crazier uncle… crazy because Gramm purports to be a seasoned politician. But also, Gramm is way old enough to realize that his giant and self-referent loose lips can sink worthy ships.

Gramm is not ‘a distraction’ as he will attempt to spin this to hold to his own polluted opinions about Americans while pretending to ‘do the honorable thing.’ There is no honor in his resignation after he has made such a mess. But, Gramm’s archaic, intrusive, off the mark attitudes are a passe form of cadaverous politics. Gramm’s time is over. Dead over.

However, the damage is done. And unfortunately, some voters will wonder if Senator McCain really, at heart, shares Gramm’s Sadducean slanders of American people, otherwise why would McCain have hired Gramm on, and in such high position…

______
CODA
July 11, 2008 The Moderate Voice, dr.e: “Senator McCain, It’s Time to Dump Phil Gramm Before He Sinks You”

also, July 18, 2008. The Moderate Voice, Joe. G: “McCain Reportedly To Keep Gramm As Adviser And Surrogate”

  • SteveK
    After everything that has gone against Gramm these last few months, my gut feeling is that it was his participation in the 'soft-core porn' business that finally got him 'fired'. Why? McCains NEEDS the religious right and an issue like this is probably the only Gramm misstep that has shown up on their radar.

    Personal opinion: Gramm's career as a movie producer is the very least of his offensives.
  • kritt11
    His "whiners" comment turned off middle-class voters who have seen their standard of living plummet over the last 8 years, as gas prices more than doubled , food and housing costs increased and wages stayed stagnant.
  • kathyedits
    while Gramm is a coddled multimillionaire and has NEVER gone without anything even remotely related to stapes and necessities. Never.

    I wonder what that would feel like. God, it must feel like going into a superbly well-air conditioned store on a beastly hot day. And I would wish that I could know, even for just one day, what it feels like never to have had to worry about how to pay for food or rent even for a minute, but I know at the end of that day, I would feel the same way that I feel when I push open the door of that store from the inside, and walk back out into the heat.
  • JSpencer
    I guess Ben Bernanke was suffering one of those "mental recessions" when he called it a "crisis". I mean really, Gramm knows more about the economy than the chairman of the Federal Reserve eh?
  • runasim
    Gramm wasn't McCain's crazy uncle; he has been McCain's \much admired font of knowledge for all things economic for years. His transgression was one of using harsh, callous words, but the words revealed nothing new about his understanding of economics or that of McCain's.
    Gramm's words were insensitive, but I think it's a mistake to get hung up on word usage. The important thing is to know, what his - and MCain's- economic policies are, because even if Gramm is gone, his policies remain behind - with McCain.

    Don't worry about McCain's HONOR, worry about his economics. I certainly am, and that's one reason I can't vote for thim.
  • Jim_Satterfield
    Could we lose the old cliche of age bringing wisdom? In our modern world with its rapid rate of change there are many areas in which age only means that some just can't comprehend how very different things are for a twenty-something young adult now than it was for them forty or fifty years ago. I certainly don't think McCain, the man who admits he can't even work a PC, begins to understand a thing about the modern world.
  • DLS
    ??? "Finally" makes no sense.
  • DLS
    "His "whiners" comment turned off middle-class voters"

    I'm not worried too much about this, because he was right, just engaging in very poor timing and PR, and deserved to go for that reason. Only true whiners (proving him right) were upset or outraged about it. Normal people simply saw it as being out of touch with people's grappling with higher fuel and other prices and an excessively poor public morale about the economy these days. (He was right about something else -- misery sells news, particularly if it's hyped to sell better.)
  • Jim_Satterfield
    No, he wasn't right. Only the right thinks he was right. It is the nature of conservatives to be slow to adapt to new realities like the old classic definition of recession not applying to the new global economy and what it's doing to the American middle class.
  • runasim
    I just realized how right Jim Satterfield really is.
    The inablity to accept and absorb new information and changing circumstances is a sign of old age. Only, it seems that a whole political faction is suffering from a premature onset of old age symptoms. That would explain the aversion of science, for one thing.
  • DLS
    ""Only the right thinks he was right.""

    The truth, on the other hand, is that the intelligent and dispassionate know he was right -- he made correct statements of fact, including that misery sells in the media.

    * * *

    "The inablity to accept and absorb new information and changing circumstances is a sign of old age."

    To some extent, yes, but I'd instead say J. Sat is closer to the truth -- for all their many errors, and other problems they've developed particularly since the 1960s, liberals are seen by most as tending to be optimists and positivists and innovative, while conservatives are seen as tending to be pessimists and negativists and resistant to new ideas or to change. (To be more accurate, they tend to defend the status quo, they are defensive while liberals are the opposite, "offensive" in the sense of seizing and exercising the initiative for change, which is obviously not the same, etymologically or as known from our own experiences, as improvement. There is also the hate on the Left that completes the picture most see of the chessboard: Liberals play white, conservatives play black.)
  • DLS
    "That would explain the aversion of science, for one thing."

    It's normally been the Left who is against science, technology, and what it gives us in addition to what our resources give us, industry. (Much of the Left is stupidly anti-nuclear even though the science and the facts prove them mindlessly wrong. They are against the most practical, effective, and sensible development today and have misplaced faith in dreams far in the future. They exploit science to cripple industry and impose new controls over people and industry in the case of global warming, along with psychological silliness, the "need" for Western "guilt," and so on.) The exceptions are when these are exploited politically by the Left (as with global warming activism and anti-nuclear and anti-conventional-industry and anti-automobile nonsense that we see frequently, or with play-pen blogging, etc.).
  • Anagram:

    Former Senator and Rep William Philip Gramm =
    Grammar mind melt: "Poor are whiners." A flip lip!
  • Anagram:

    Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes =

    Altar-lens-prose aids sick.

    You can't anagram my name haha. :(
  • runasim
    Jab/kill d.y.y. (dumb Yankee yokels)
  • SteveK
    JillyDybka,

    Personally I think "Radiance Skills as Poster" is a much better anagram for "Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes" but then I, too, am burdened with prejudice. :)
  • ha that's great!
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