Phil Gramm (left), McCain’s treasury-secretary-in-waiting, the man who ramrodded the deregulation into law in the 1990s that is at the root of today’s economic meltdown, blamed the crisis on Americans, whom he called a “nation of whiners”

At a certain point, politicians who lie persistently will lose their credibility with voters. What’s tragic in the United States these days is that — unless the lie is about sex — politicians can prevaricate, dissemble and tell blatant falsehoods for years without suffering blowback. The American people didn’t wise up to George Bush, a lifelong, sociopathic liar, for example, until after he’d been reelected.
McCain has used the Bushism, “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” no less than 16 times since the beginning of the year.
The odds are against it, but let’s hope it takes less than five weeks, not five years, for the public to wise up about John McCain.

Yesterday, within hours after dismissing the meltdown on Wall Street by saying the fundamentals of the economy were strong, McCain lied about the meaning of what he’d meant by “fundamentals.”

Here is his original statement about the meltdown, which is a regurg of Bush’s standard talking point on the economy:

“Our economy, I believe, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong, but these are very, very difficult times, so I promise you: We will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street,” McCain said.

He added: “The McCain-Palin administration will replace an outdated, patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street. We will have transparency and accountability and we will reform the regulatory bodies of government.”

Note that there is not a word or phrase in his statement that refers even indirectly to American workers. Nonetheless, after a barrage of criticism, McCain came out a few hours later with a totally fabricated formulation in which he implied that he was referring to workers when he said the fundamentals of the economy were strong:

“Today we are seeing tremendous upheaval on Wall Street. The American economy is in crisis. Unemployment is on the rise and our financial markets are in turmoil. People are concerned about our economic future. But let me say something: this economic crisis is not the fault of the American people. Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest working, the best skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world,” McCain’s prepared text said.

The text went on to say: “My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong. No one can match an American worker. Our workers sell more goods to more markets than any other on earth. Our workers have always been the strength of our economy, and they remain the strength of our economy today.”

Also note that McCain has used the Bushism about strong fundamentals no less than 16 times this year.

This round of lies came just a few hours after McCain admitted that his ad attacking Barack Obama last week for purportedly calling Sarah Palin a pig was a lie — and a day after Palin herself lied for the ninth time about her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere.

The walk-back statement implies that someone blamed the meltdown on American workers, but the only person who has ever suggested that the current crisis was the fault of Americans was McCain’s chief economic adviser and treasury-secretary-in-waiting, former Sen. Phil Gramm, who said earlier this year that the recessionary economy was really just mass hysteria, and that Americans — presumably especially including American workers — had become a “nation of whiners.”

And in the sort of irony that is the hallmark of Republicans in power, it was Gramm, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in the 1990s, who ramrodded into law the deregulation of the banking and energy sectors that is the root cause of the current crises. It would be laughable, but not funny, if it were to fall to President McCain’s treasury secretary, Phil Gramm, “to bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street,” not to mention “reform.”

Obama responded by painting McCain as clueless:

It’s not that I think John McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of most Americans. I just think doesn’t know. He doesn’t get what’s happening between the mountain in Sedona where he lives and the corridors of Washington where he works. Why else would he say that we’ve made great progress economically under George Bush? Why else would he say that the economy isn’t something he understands as well as he should? Why else would he say, today, of all days – just a few hours ago – that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong?

It is nothing short of amazing that, after eight years of the presidency of one clueless liar, about half the voters in the country are ready to elect another one.