Obama: McCain's staff IS the 'old boys' network' Nick Cargo

Published: Wednesday September 17, 2008





Print This Email This Senator Obama had choice words for Senator McCain's Monday assertion that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" in the wake of this week's Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the following 500-point plunge in the Dow Jones, Bank of America's Merrill Lynch buyout, and the American taxpayers' underwriting of an $85 billion infusion into insurer AIG, the 18th-largest company in the world.



"Now, his campaign must have realized that probably this wasn't the smartest thing to say on the day of a financial meltdown," Obama said in Elko, Nevada today, "so they sent him back a few hours later to clean up his remarks.



"But it sounds like he got a little carried away, because yesterday John McCain actually said that if he's President, he'll take on, and I quote, 'the old boys' network in Washington.' I'm not making this up. This is somebody who's been in Congress for 26 years who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign. And now, he tells us that he's the one who's going to take on the 'old boys' network'. The 'old boys network!' In the McCain campaign that's called a 'staff meeting.' Come on."



"I reject the doom and gloom that says our nation is in decline," Senator McCain said today at a General Motors factory in Lake Orion, Michigan. "America's best days are ahead of us."



"We're going to take care of the workers," he added. "They're the ones that deserve our help."



Sen. Obama went on to lampoon Sen. McCain's "anger" at greedy elements on Wall Street. "He is so angry," said Obama, "that he wants to punish them with $200 billion worth of tax cuts for them! And if they're not careful, he'll give them even more tax cuts for shipping our jobs overseas.



"I mean, who's he getting these lines from? The lobbyists who are running his campaign? Maybe it's Phil Gramm. Some of you know Phil Gramm, the man who was the architect of some of the deregulation in Washington that helped cause the mess on Wall Street."



Former Texas Congressman and Senator Phil Gramm stepped down from his post as campaign co-chairman, though he remains an informal economic adviser, after his infamous July remarks calling the United States a "nation of whiners."



"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," Gramm told the Washington Times on July 9, 2008. "We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline...We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today." Gramm opined that the nation has "benefited greatly" from three decades of globalization.



"Misery sells newspapers," Gramm went on. "Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day."



The following video is from ABCNews.com, broadcast September 17, 2008.









Download video via RawReplay.com







