When a spokesman won’t rule something out, it’s not ruled out. That’s unfortunately, or fortunately, the way it works in politics. And in this video you can see that the issue remains open: if people vote for John McCain for President does this mean they could get Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary?
We originally had this post as shorter with just a link, but it merits giving you the whole YouTube with a few news links. You can just see the Obama camp running to its TV ad producers now to get some of this on the air with a recap of Gramm calling Americans “whiners,” calling the U.S. financial state a “mental recession” and quoting from some experts who say Gramm is partly to blame for laws that brought the Wall Street catastrophe to fruition.
It would have been much smarter for McCain’s spokesperson to rule Gramm out and if McCain decided on him later they could deal with it later. The lack of a flat-out denial keeps the issue alive — and will make some voters cringe. For some, it’ll make a vote for McCain a nonstarter.
A few related links:
—Gramm to the contrary, we’re not imagining this mess
—Campaign advisers helped create mess
—Phil Gramm: McCain’s Terrorist In Pinstripes
—Economists Blame Gramm For Crisis
—McCain guru linked to subprime crisis
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.