Crisis! Crisis! Crisis!

What in the world is going on with John McCain these past two days? Has he totally flipped?

When he said yesterday, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," he was taking a defensible position. He could have parlayed it as the voice of calm when all around him were losing their heads. He could have called Obama Chicken Little, and assured everyone that the national economy would feel the latest troubles, but would pull through it.

He could have been the voice of age and experience. He would have been accused of being the next Herbert Hoover, but still -- it was a defensible position.

But he decided to get weird, instead. First, he (his handlers, really) come up with the ridiculous cover that "when he says the fundamentals of the economy, he is referring to the workers." Then, he starts running around the chicken yard shouting "Crisis! We're in a crisis!" And then, finally, having convinced us we're a nation in CRISIS, he tells us what he thinks should be done about it. Are you ready for this?

Appoint a committee.

No, seriously, that's what he says.

Read this, from the NY Times' The Caucus. Does McCain sound confused to you?

On NBC’s “Today” show, Matt Lauer, from the floor of the New York Stock exchange, described Monday’s 500-point drop as a “bloodbath” and asked Mr. McCain how he could say that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” while his campaign released an ad saying that the economy is in crisis. “Clarify this for me,’’ Mr. Lauer said. “It doesn’t seem as if both things can be true.’’

Mr. McCain replied by saying that when he spoke about the fundamentals of the economy, he was referring to the workers – which is different from how he has described the term before.

“Well it’s obviously true that the workers of America are the fundamentals of our economy, and our strength and our future,’’ he said. “And I believe in the American worker, and someone who disagrees with that – it’s fine. We are in crisis. We all know that. The excess, the greed and the corruption of Wall Street have caused us to have a situation which is going to affect every American. We are in a total crisis.’’

Mr. Lauer asked if there was something wrong with the fundamentals of the economy that was causing the difficulty.

“There’s nothing wrong with the workers of America,’’ he said. “I believe that they’re the fundamentals. You may not, others may not. I think that the worker of America is the reason that we’ve been the preeminent economy in the world for a long, long period of time. America is in crisis today.’’

“We need a 9/11 commission, and we need a commission to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it,’’ he said. “And I know we can do it and how to do it.”

He continued the reformulation – that when he says the fundamentals of the economy, he is referring to the workers – at the rally here. “The working people of the state of Florida and this nation are the most innovative, hardest working, the best-skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world,’’ he said. “And this foundation of our economy, the American worker, is strong. But it’s been put a great risk by the greed and mismanagement of Wall Street and Washington.’’

In his remarks in Colorado Tuesday, Senator Barack Obama responded to the idea of a commission to study Wall Street’s woes: “Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book – you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here’s the thing – this isn’t 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out."