Economists are not noted for their political sensitivity, but today's comments by Dr. Phil Gramm, John McCain's Chief
Economic Adviser, may have set something of a record.
In an interview with the cult-owned Washington Times, Gramm suddenly flipped the switch, tossed away the meds, and took off on the flawed character of modern American society as a whole.
Decrying the news media for exaggerating "misery" to "sell newspapers" and create artificial "anxiety" over the state of the economy, Dr. Gramm declared that:
We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline. You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession.
John McCain, Dr. Gramm's principle client, was quick to distance himself from these remarks, declaring that "Gramm does not speak for me. I speak for me," and that he "strongly disagreed" with the comments. 
Dr. Gramm has sometimes been mentioned as a candidate to become McCain's US Treasury Secretary, should McCain win the White House this November. Gramm's remarks today recalled the similar "foot in mouth" propensities of another academic economist and recent Treasury Secretary, Dr. Larry Summers.
Summers lost his position as President of Harvard in 2006 when, among other things, he addressed a group of outstanding female academics in Boston and could not resist floating the pet theory that their relative lack of success in "hard sciences" might be due at least in part to "intrinsic differences" between the sexes.
