Phil Gramm

Aside from dim Bush-style clichés ("the fundamentals of our economy are strong") and vaguely populist scapegoating (“Wall Street is the villain”), exactly what does John McCain have to offer Americans frightened by the current financial bloodbath and the certainty of recession?

Suddenly he and Sarah Palin are promising to expand their crusade for “reform” from Capitol Hill to the capitalists. "I promise you we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street," said McCain.

"Washington has been asleep at the switch, and ineffective," declared his running mate this morning, in her usual earnest manner.  read more »

According to an official with the McCain campaign, there will now be a concerted effort to get more out of the many former Bush rangers and pioneers that the campaign has assembled.

"We'll have a more established bundling program," said the official, adding that the campaign would ask its major fund-raisers to be more "aggressive and accountable."

In other words, McCain wants bundlers to vie with each other -- a phenomenon that seems to occur rather naturally in Hillary's donor universe.

"There will be more competition between the fund-raisers," said the official. "We're focused on providing them the tools that can provide success, by placing goals in front of folks, meeting those goals, tracking how we are doing more closely. Establishing metrics and meeting those." Another campaign aide said that campaign co-chairs Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas and former congressman Tom Loeffler will become more involved with the finance side of the operation, working with McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt to boost fund-raising.