Senator John McCain has spent the week trying to tell people that he feels their economic pain. So it was more than a little unhelpful when former Senator Phil Gramm, one of McCain's top economic advisers was quoted Thursday as saying that the United States was only in a “mental recession” and that it had become a “nation of whiners.”

Senator Barack Obama, noting that Mr. McCain had previously said an expansion of offshore oil drilling might have a “psychological” benefit for the country, seized on Mr. Gramm’s remarks, made in an interview with The Washington Times.

“You know, America already has one Dr. Phil,” Mr. Obama said at a campaign stop in Fairfax, Va. “When it comes to the economy, we don’t need another.”