Clinton Team Defends Garin, Says McCain Would Not Be Improvement Over Bush

Clinton campaign communications director Howard Wolfson took to the airwaves on Morning Joe today to defend the halting, unsure performance of newly minted chief strategist Geoff Garin on yesterday's Meet The Press from the ridicule of host Joe Scarborough. Scarborough, by the way, is apparently an aficionado of the latest in beer commercials.

[WATCH.]

SCARBOROUGH: What happened yesterday on Meet The Press? Clinton communication director Howard Wolfson. Dude. Dude. Did you see those dude beer commercials? If I'm you, I'm going, dude? Dude?

BRZEZINSKI: Howard. come on.

SCARBOROUGH: Dude, what happened yesterday?

BRZEZINSKI: You weren't there.

WOLFSON: Geoff, Geoff, Geoff is new to the campaign, he is our...

SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, you can tell.

WOLFSON: No, no. He is our fabulous chief strategist. And it was important for him to go out on Meet The Press for us and I thought he did a great job. David was very feisty. And I think it's in keeping with the kind of campaign that Senator Obama has been running in Pennsylvania these last few days. They have turned very, very negative. So negative in fact that even the press has noticed it and reported it today that the Obama campaign is doing everything it can to spend as much money as it can to spread as much negative information as it can about Senator Clinton here in the closing days in Pennsylvania.

BRZEZINSKI: But as David Axelrod pointed out, the negative ads go both ways. We have been showing them. And I think that's fair. What is he reading there?

SCARBOROUGH: We are still obsessed with Meet The Press. He was reading Cliff Notes on the Clinton campaign.

BRZEZINSKI: Did you write them.

WOLFSON: This is now bordering on the self-referential.

Later, Wolfson reacted strongly to a comment that Obama made over the weekend, that John McCain would, at the very least, be an improvement over President Bush. He pressed the Clinton camp's now-familiar "important state" electability case, suggesting that Tuesday's Pennsylvania result will be a harbinger of success in the general election.

[WATCH.]

WOLFSON: Well, look, we do not agree with Senator Obama that Senator McCain would be an improvement over George Bush in the white house. But he is certainly a formidable figure which is why the Democrats need to nominate the best person we can to go up against him in the fall. And if you look at some of the polling in the swing states like Pennsylvania, like Ohio, like Florida, it is in fact Senator Clinton who matches up much better with Senator Clinton than Senator Obama. And here we have in Pennsylvania another test of this.