IT'S NOT ST. McCAIN'S FAULT

Satyam at Think Progress found on July 25th McCain's chief economic advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, admitting that McCain doesn't speak for McCain:

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s chief economic adviser, says the numbers he provided to the TPC aren’t secret—they’re the same ones he provides to anyone who asks. He also disputes the way the study takes suggestions McCain has made on the stump out of context. “This is parsing words out of campaign appearances to an unreasonable degree,” Holtz-Eakin said. “He has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls” that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.

Now, the pundits are saying that his own campaign doesn't speak for McCain.
(h/t Atrios & Josh Marshall) Here's the relevant passage from the August 4th edition of HARDBALL¹:

MITCHELL: ... the sort of appropriate realm of political combat. By the way, I have maybe a counterintuitive view that John McCain also doesn`t like this kind of politics, went along with his new, tougher political advisers, and I think on some of his responses such as saying last week, personally saying that he thought that Barack Obama had retracted some of his previous comments -- I think he`s inside a bubble and is not aware that Barack Obama never did say that and he`s being told by his advisers, you know, He did this, he did that, Obama did this. I think he`s been ginned up a little bit.

BARNICLE: I agree with you.

MITCHELL: I think all of these candidates are being handled a bit too much. You know, they`re traveling. They`re giving speeches. They don`t see what we all see who are fixated on this stuff. They don`t know.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNICLE: I absolutely agree with you. Do you agree with that, Roger?

SIMON: I do. For a guy who`s supposed to have such a famous temper, McCain really doesn`t like attacking. I think Andrea is exactly right about that. Which is why I think he is often uncomfortable with his own campaign. The Britney and Paris ad I think will go down in history as one of the most visually incoherent ads ever shown on TV. At the end of it, it just made John McCain, in my opinion, look like a grumpy old man.

BARNICLE: Well, it also -- it also, I would think, gets to his -- something that he`s very proud of, has been very proud of, and it`s clear in talking to him over the years -- his sense of honor. And I think an ad like that offended, or would offend, if he paid attention to it, his sense of honor. Do you agree with that, Andrea?

SIMON: I do, but I think that he may have been misled about what Obama did or did not say, about how he may have been mischaracterized from the House caucus meeting that he attended. You know, there`s a lot of anecdotal stuff out there, and in this Internet age and with the blogosphere, things are just ricocheting around. And I think he just -- as a candidate, there`s no way that he could be tracking all of this himself.

You put the two snippets together and you are forced to conclude that McCain simply isn't responsible for both what he says and what his campaign does. Obviously, this isn't the sort of person we want as President.

¹MSNBC
August 4, 2008 Monday
SHOW: HARDBALL 5:00 PM EST
HARDBALL for August 4, 2008 MSNBC
BYLINE: Mike Barnicle, Andrea Mitchell
GUESTS: Roger Simon, Jim Warren, Susan Page, Mike Paul, Del Walters, John Heilemann, Michelle Bernard, Maria Teresa Petersen
SECTION: NEWS; Domestic
LENGTH: 7867 words