McCain's Golden Parachute Rhetoric Malfunctions

Boy, doesn't it seem like it was not so long ago that McCain and Palin were firing on all cylinders and everyone was questioning Obama's campaign strategy? Of course, that was back when McCain and his Wunderkind Bobblehead VP didn't have to deal with anything of substance. Now that they do, we get a daily dose of this sort of stuff:

"We will stop multimillion dollar payouts to CEO’s who have broken the public trust. We will put an end to running Wall Street like a casino. We will make businesses work for the benefit of their shareholders and employees. And we will make sure that your savings, IRA, 401k and pension accounts are protected,” McCain said.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, echoed McCain's comments almost verbatim as she campaigned on her own in Golden, Colo., Monday.

"John McCain and I we're going to put an end to the mismanagement and abuses and on Wall Street that have resulted in this financial crisis," Palin said Monday. "We are going to reform the way Wall Street does business and stop multi-million dollar payouts and golden parachutes to CEOs who break the public trust."

And then later in the same article:

McCain's top economics adviser Carly Fiorina, a McCain campaign surrogate who made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows this past weekend and appeared on CNN Monday speaking for McCain, herself benefited from a multimillion dollar payout.

Fiorina was dismissed as the CEO of Hewlett Packard in 2005 after a merger with Compaq floundered, stock prices plunged 50 percent, and 20,000 people were layed off. Fiorina walked away with a $21.4 million severance package.

I've never understood why McCain picked Fiorina as a surrogate in the first place. Was it just another example of cynical gender-pandering? I don't think it's really that impressive to have a female CEO speaking for you when she is widely considered to have been a poor female CEO. Does he really not understand this? And Fiorina herself has on more than one occasion made embarrassingly stupid remarks on the trail... more on that in a bit.