The List: McCain's Economic Advisers Who are the people who have left McCain confused about his own opinions? Here are his economic advisers mentioned in the press:
Doug Holtz-Eakin Holtz-Eakin is a formerly respected academic and government economist who has been reduced to making distortionary arguments to paper over the massive deficit black hole McCain's tax cuts would create.
Arthur Laffer Laffer is the originator of the Laffer curve, the fringe view that claims government revenue increases when tax rates are lowered. There is zero empirical evidence this is true at current tax rates. McCain has repeatedly said that he believes this foolishness, but Holtz-Eakin has said (also repeatedly) that McCain does not.
Phil Gramm Gramm is a lobbyist who was vice president of one of the investment houses most heavily implicated in the mortage industry scandal. As a senator he pushed for the banking deregulation that contributed to the current crisis.
Kevin Hassett Hassett has been widely ridiculed for writing the book Dow 36000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market in 1999, predicting that the Dow would hit 36,000 within five years, if not sooner.
Donald Luskin Luskin has been repeatedly named the Stupidest Man Alive by Brad Delong. See here for an example. I can attest based on my own interaction with him a few years back that in addition to being not the sharpest tack in the box, he is also an extremely unpleasant person.
Nancy Pfotenhauer Pfotenhauer is a pure distilled product of Koch Industries, an oil company which funds much of the right wing message machine.
Carly Fiorina Fiorina was spectacularly fired from her previous job as CEO of HP. According to the Times,
... Republicans say Ms. Fiorina is using the McCain campaign to rebuild her image after her explosive tenure at Hewlett-Packard. They also say it is hard to see why a woman widely criticized for mismanaging one of Silicon Valley’s legendary companies is advising and representing a candidate who acknowledged last year that he did not understand the economy as well as he should.
Regarding Fiorina, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the senior associate dean for executive programs at the Yale School of Management, says "What a blind spot this is in the McCain campaign to have elevated her stature and centrality in this way. You couldn’t pick a worse, non-imprisoned C.E.O. to be your standard-bearer.”
With people like this advising him, it's not surprising that doesn't even know what his own positions are on major questions of economic policy. Admittedly, there's a difficult problem of cause-and-effect here. Is he incoherent because he gets lousy advice, or is it his utter ignorance on economic issues that led him to seek guidance from this crew? As evidence for the latter hypothesis, he has said "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," and made similar assertions on many occasions.
"Just the Facts" implies just the facts. This post and your post above are egregiously partisan.....nothing wrong with that, but why call yourself something you're not?
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