When he was with Bush, McCain kept trying to pump the president up, sometimes to extremes.
Whenever prices at the gas pump soar, President Obama's popularity takes a hit, he suggested at a private fundraising event -- and which is backed up by a recent poll.
Susan Rice's tumble is part of a disturbing pattern of rushing to pump up the president on national security, which seems particularly stupid because it's so unnecessary.
"If we get some kind of explosion — like an Israeli attack or some local Iranian revolutionary guard decides to take matters in his own hands and attacks a tanker — than we'd see oil prices push up 20 to 25 percent higher and another 50 cents a gallon at the pump," said Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research.
In 2008, Mitt Romney willingly — and publicly — tapped into his personal fortune to run for president, pumping nearly $45 million directly into his political campaign.
"The White House pumped up the President's schedule to show him being much busier and more engaged than he is, and Tom Brokaw let it happen — the show was a valentine to Bush.
With Venezuela's oil production returning to normal and Saudi Arabia still pumping furiously, the president of OPEC, the oil producers' cartel, fretted publicly this week about an oil glut and a price collapse.
"Tonight I'm gonna get drunk, listen to James Brown and at midnight I'll say: 'I feel good!'" Mourad Boudjellal, Toulon's president, pumps up the volume after his side's Heineken Cup success.
Local support "Already, with UNICEF's help, we are organizing the tender process which will see contractors selected by villages to maintain pumps," said Vice President of the regional council Onhué Ouattara.
To be sure, they are supposed to, as the president insists, pump dollars into the hands of cash-starved Americans whose spending will jump start the economy.
