The wit who first said “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” captured the downside of political surrogates, those folks who in trying to be helpful too often only make things worse for their candidates.

The latest example is former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, himself a failed presidential candidate in 1996. In the midst of this year?s nose-diving economy, he may have thought he was aiding his old pal, Arizona Sen. John McCain, by saying the nation was suffering only a “mental recession,” not a real one.

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