WP, Eugene Robinson: McCain "doesn't speak officially for his own campaign."

[DeepModem Mom]

Johnny, We Hardly Know Ye
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, August 22, 2008; Page A17

....It's understandable that McCain would want to fuzz this aspect of his biography; at a moment of great economic dislocation and anxiety, people might question your ability to feel their pain if they know that your net worth may be somewhere north of $100 million. Much less comprehensible, and much more troubling, is McCain's habit of "Straight Talking" himself into the wilderness.

When it was pointed out that McCain's pronouncements on the economy often do not conform to his official positions, the candidate's chief economic adviser indicated that we should pay attention to the authorized version -- despite the fact that McCain "has certainly I'm sure said things in town halls" that might deviate.

In other words, don't pay such strict attention to what McCain says because he doesn't speak officially for his own campaign. No wonder he was so insistent on trying to lure Obama into a series of town hall encounters, where Obama might feel constrained by such irrelevancies as consistency and arithmetic.

I guess McCain's unreliability as a spokesman for himself on the issue that voters tell pollsters they care most about should come as no surprise, given his earlier confession -- since retracted, sort of -- that he doesn't really understand economics that well. He is supposed to be an expert on foreign affairs and national security, however -- and here, too, the cannon has come unbelayed and is rolling perilously around the deck....

***

I'm leaving aside his mini-misstatements in which he confused Sunnis with Shiites or otherwise garbled salient facts about Iraq. What alarms me is the pattern of inconsistency. One day he's soothing, the next he's abrasive. One day he makes a flat-out pledge not to raise taxes, the next he says that everything is on the table as far as Social Security is concerned. One day the buck stops here, the next he's not authorized to speak for, ahem, himself....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/21/AR2008082103112.html?nav=hcmodule

[zbdent]

1. "I'm John McCain, and though I approve of this message,

I had absolutely nothing to do with it, and disapprove of its tactics ..."