Tucker Bounds, McCain campaign spokesman, is always good for a post when he's allowed to come on the scene, if only to show just how ridiculously inane the McCain campaign has to be to deflect attention from itself. On MSNBC, Bounds refused to commit to David Shuster that Phil Gramm will not be John McCain's Treasury Secretary.
Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse. Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary? {{shudder}} The man most responsible for the repeal of the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, which paved the way for our economic situation today should be in charge of the Treasury? You know, the man known as Foreclosure Phil who says that Americans are just whiners, imagining the crisis? The mind reels at just how reckless and risky such an appointment would be for America, and those are the exact kind of adjectives that McCain loves to describe his picks.
No wonder why Bounds sounds so anxious to project this as a "lie" on the part of Barack Obama, insisting that Gramm is no longer advising the campaign (something his own campaign proxies have denied in the past), as if this means he wouldn't be part of the McCain Cabinet. He even sneaks in a completely superfluous reference to Franklin Raines, a person the McCain campaign has repeatedly linked to Obama, even though major media outlets have said that McCain is exaggerating wildly the connection between them and Raines has denied any kind of advisory role. Sadly, time doesn't allow Shuster to call out Bounds for his typically GOP false equivalencies.
Transcripts below the fold
BOUNDS: ...Let's talk about tissues. Let's talk about honesty and which candidate is going to shoot straight with the American voters. And when Barack Obama says that John McCain has chosen Phil Gramm to be Secretary of Treasury when this election isn't even over, and he is not advising this campaign, he is lying. And when you talk about it with me over national air, I don't understand why we're doing it.
SHUSTER: You can make it clear right now. Can you assure that John McCain will not pick Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary if John McCain wins the election?
BOUNDS: He is not even an adviser on this campaign, David. I don't know where the sorts of rumor mills come from.
SHUSTER: Why don't you put them down...
BOUNDS: But I think they come from the Obama campaign, straight to you, straight to us on air.
SHUSTER: Well, Tucker, you can make your point better just to say Phil Gramm-John McCain has told me Phil Gramm will not be Treasury Secretary under any circumstance in the McCain administration.
BOUNDS: It is an absurd thing to say. It would be as if I was to say Franklin Raines would head up the Housing and Urban Development wing for Barack Obama.
SHUSTER: Right, but the difference, Tucker, the Obama campaign said that will never happen and I have yet to hear you say -
BOUNDS: If I were to make that allegation, you'd call it a lie. You'd call it a lie and I'm not making it , but Barack Obama is.
SHUSTER: Tucker, Tucker. The difference is the Obama campaign will tell us flat out he will not be part of the Obama administration. I still haven't heard you say Phil Gramm will not be part of a McCain administration.
BOUNDS: It is inherently true. He stepped down from this campaign. He is not advising the campaign. I mean, these are the sorts of absurdities that we're talking about and it is all because Barack Obama gets away with saying things are not true and then people believe them to be some way based in fact. It is absurd.
SHUSTER: All right. Tucker, spokesperson for the McCain campaign. Pleasure as always.
