Mr. Gasbag and Dr. No

Does everyone know what the Straight Talk Express would bring to the White House if voters are stupid enough to elect Mr. Gasbag?

You would think so. Even The Wall Street Journal knows. It would mean "The Return of Dr. No."

And what does Dr. No (a k a Phil Gramm), the Gasbag's top economic adviser, regard as a signal achievement? "I consider defeating Hillary health care as one of my greatest accomplishments," he told The Journal in an interview published over the weekend.

Here's another of his greatest accomplishments:

His accusers charge that he nearly single-handedly torpedoed the housing and financial market when he wrote the laws that took down the Depression-era barriers between investment and commercial banks.

Or as David Corn put it last May in Mother Jones:

Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. [...]

But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry — friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career — came on December 15, 2000. [...]

In essence, Wall Street's biggest players (which, thanks to Gramm's earlier banking deregulation efforts, now incorporated everything from your checking account to your pension fund) ran a secret casino.

Dr. No once had presidential ambitions himself, but his 1996 bid for the Banana Republican nomination failed. "I'm too ugly to be president," he says. (That didn't stop LBJ.)

Meanwhile, he remains as ugly as ever. Since leaving Washington in 2002, the former Senator has kept "intentionally invisible," he says, so he could "devote his full energies" to Wall Street wheeling and dealing.

He's also shameless:

I recently told Ed Whitacre [former CEO of AT&T, who retired with a $158 million pay package] he was probably the most exploited worker in American history. [...] His severance package should have been billions.

"Almost certainly," The Journal says, Mr. Gasbag would make Dr. No the Secretary of the Treasury.