A few days ago, the McCain campaign released a letter signed by 300 economists expressing support for the McCain economic agenda. Only...turns out a lot of those economists don't support the McCain agenda. Or McCain. And weren't aware the statement -- which they were asked to sign months ago, before the campaign had released McCain's economic plans -- was still going to be issued. Avi Zenilman and Alexander Burns have the whole story. This fits into a broader problem for the McCain campaign which is that their economic policy shop is terribly inept. Their numbers don't add up. Their statements contradict each other. They can't even release a letter without falling face first into the mud. To some degree, this is Doug Holtz-Eakin not doing a very good job. But the broader problem is that the candidate doesn't know much about economics and so didn't know how to staff his economic team, and has no idea how to reform it into something that stops causing problems for his campaign.
