Gramm resigns from McCain campaign

Former Sen. Phil Gramm resigned late Friday as a co-chairman of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, capping a day filled with controversy for McCain, the presumed Republican nominee.

"It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country," Gramm said in a statement issued by the campaign. "That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain's ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country's problems, it hurts the country."

Gramm, a multimillionaire banker, has been under fire since last week, when he dismissed concerns about a troubled economy by referring to "a mental recession." He also said the United States had become "a nation of whiners," providing fodder for Democrats to portray Republicans as out of touch with the concern of ordinary Americans.

Since the start of his campaign, but particularly since the onset of the most recent economic turmoil, McCain has been struggling to convince voters of his ability to manage the economy, an area he has acknowledged in the past as a weakness. Gramm, in addition to being a close friend, helped design his economic program and, until his gaffe, was being mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary in a McCain administration.

Democrats quickly criticized Gramm's efforts to blame them Friday for his resignation. "The question for John McCain isn't whether Phil Gramm will continue as chairman of his campaign, but whether he will continue to keep the economic plan that Gramm authored and that represents a continuation of the polices that have failed American families for the last eight years," said Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the Obama campaign.

The Gramm resignation followed a series of sharp exchanges between the two parties about Obama's long-anticipated trip abroad, including expected stops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In remarks in Michigan and in an advertisement made public Friday, McCain accused Obama of neglecting his responsibilities and suggested that he was undermining the war effort.

When initially asked Thursday about Obama's trip, McCain described it as long overdue but also welcome. But he began almost immediately to step up his criticism, a process that continued Friday, when he took part in a town hall-style meeting at the General Motors Technical Center in suburban Detroit.

The session was intended to be about energy independence and a new electric-powered car that General Motors is developing at the technical center. But when McCain's positions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the possibility of conflict with Iran, were questioned, he responded by attacking Obama and seeking to justify his support for the Iraq war, which Obama says was unnecessary and fought on false pretenses.

"Every intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," McCain replied, adding that the Iraqi government had also violated human rights.

In a speech at a fundraising luncheon in Detroit, McCain again implicitly criticized Obama in connection with his Iraq trip.

"I am sure that Senator Obama is going to arrive in Baghdad in a much, much safer and secure environment than the one that he would have encountered before we started the surge," McCain said.

The McCain campaign also infuriated the Obama camp by releasing a new advertisement that accused Obama of "voting against funding our troops" and said he was abandoning his original positions on the war "to help himself become president."

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, described the ad as "patently misleading," and campaign officials issued a phrase-by-phrase rebuttal.