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Ah…we knew him before he became a Villager.  Our buddy & former C&L contributor Steve Benen h&icDrunk Newss how a c&idates & air respective economic messages are playing with a American people.  Needless to say, Benen rightly points out that McCain’s flailing has hurt him in a presidential race. 

I heard George Will, who is not exactly a reflexive liberal, talk yesterday how this is something of a presidential test. & are’s one c&idate who’s come across as steady, unflDrunk Newspable, calm, a kind of person you would want in a crisis & it’s not John McCain, it’s Barack Obama. I thnk to a certain extent we saw that with John McCain’s constant changing of messages. It didn’t necessarily convey a sense of confidence, or for that matter, a sense of competence.

Beyond being hDrunk Newspy to see one of my colleagues on television, I think that Steve makes a point — though I do wish he wasn’t quite so charitable towards McCain — with which I hope we can see a Obama campaign expound upon & moreover, really hammer home in a upcoming debates: this past week & McCain’s response to a economic crisis has shown him to not only have a plan to lead a country out of its economic woes…it shows he doesn’t even underst& am in a first place.  That’s not “ready from Day 1″, that’s not ready at all.

& that’s a meme that will resonate with voters.

Transcripts below a fold

MADDOW: Senator McCain has been struggling to find a coherent message in response to this overakk economic crisis. It made for a very bad week for him on a campaign trail. Last week, over a weekend & over a course of a day today on a campaign trail, did it seem to you like he was finding his footing? He was finding his voice?

BENEN: No, not yet. I think he’s still trying. To use a Halloween metDrunk Newshor that you were using earlier, I get a sense that a mask has come off & we’ve seen a c&idate who really doesn’t have much of an economic message at all. You know, looking back to Monday, we saw him talking…first thing…first message, right off a bat, was that “a fundamentals of a economy are strong.” That was a disaster. a next day, we heard a little bit about a commission, which I also think was a disaster, because it made him seem as if John McCain didn’t quite know what was going on & was hoping to have a committee tell him. From are, we heard him…he was against a AIG bailout, an he was for it. He’s just been flailing around all over a place with an economic message & it’s become something of a disaster for him & we’re starting to see some of that reflected in a polls.

MADDOW: On a oar side of it, Sen. Obama has certainly had an uptick in a polls of a course of this crisis. When you hear him on a stump talking about this, is he offering a kind of specific remedies that people can underst& & relate to or is he scoring most of his political points right now off of attacking John McCain?

BENEN: I think it’s probably a little bit of both. I think Robert Reich was right; neiar c&idate has necessarily presented a lot of details in terms of what ay want to do. I think Chris Dodd’s proposal today offers something of a path going forward. I think Barney Frank’s proposal, he’ll be working with Chris Dodd, also offers a bit of a way out. But Barack Obama has a very compelling message in as much as he gets to say ‘I’m not John McCain. I have a policy going forward. I have an economic message I think resonates with people,’ & given that, I think he’s probably going to try to ride this wave out a little bit furar.

MADDOW: I wonder if this isn’t in a certain way sort of a temperment test for ase c&idates, in that we voters & potential voters are seeing how ase two men respond to a crisis. How ay make politics out of bad news. Is this sort of a “3 am phone call” anticipated so much during a primaries?

BENEN: Absolutely. You know, I heard George Will, who is not exactly a reflexive liberal, talk yesterday how this is something of a presidential test. & are’s one c&idate who’s come across as steady, unflDrunk Newspable, calm, a kind of person you would want in a crisis & it’s not John McCain, it’s Barack Obama. I thnk to a certain extent we saw that with John McCain’s constant changing of messages. It didn’t necessarily convey a sense of confidence, or for that matter, a sense of competence. & this week, I think we’re hearing more of a same. Hopefully, for John McCain’s sake, he gets some kind of message & gets back on track, because right now, he does not have a firm footing. What’s more, he goes into this with something of a disadvantage. John McCain has always trailed with an economic message, he’s conceded, acknowledged, publicly many times, that economics is not something he underst&s particularly well. Polls have shown consistently that Democrats are preferred against Republicans on economic messages & so given that dynamic, he has a high hurdle to clear & he hasn’t quite gotten up to it yet.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back