Back in February, President Bush famously admitted "I hadn't heard that" when asked about predictions that gasoline would soon hit $4 a gallon. Today, Bush dropped jaws again on the topic of spiraling fuel costs, belatedly acknowledging, "I've heard of it now."

Then a few moments later, the President made his case for offshore drilling. After admitting that expanded drilling in ANWR and off the nation's coastlines won't have any near-term benefit on gas prices, Bush like McCain and Phil Gramm before him turned arm chair psychologist:

"I readily concede that, you know, it's not going to produce a barrel of oil tomorrow, but it is going to change the psychology."

If that sounds like something that John McCain might have said, that's because it is.

On more than one occasion, Sigmund McCain claimed the Americans' pain at the pump psychosomatic. At a town hall meeting in Fresno in June, McCain finally overcame his own cognitive dissonance on the issue of offshore oil drilling. Acknowledging the inescapable conclusion that expanded oil exploration off Florida and California wouldn't lower gas prices for years, McCain insisted it was nonetheless the right tonic for Americans' economic woes:

"I don't see an immediate relief, but I do see that exploitation of existing reserves that may exist -- and in view of many experts that do exist off our coasts -- is also a way that we need to provide relief. Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial."

While Dr. McCain's about-face on offshore drilling is new, his conclusion that the deepening American economic crisis is merely psychological is not.

Last month, John McCain prescribed his summer gas tax holiday for America's depressed drivers, explaining "In the short term I'd like to give you a little relief for the summer on the gas tax." But back in April, McCain told Fox News host Neil Cavuto that his placebo was just what the doctor ordered for Americans' fragile psyches, if not their pocketbooks:

"I'm very concerned about it, Neil. And obviously the way it's been going up is just terrible. But I think psychologically - and a lot of our problems today, as you know, are psychological - the confidence, trust, the uncertainty about our economic future, ability to keep our own home. This might give them a little psychological boost. Let's have some straight talk, it's not a huge amount of money."

Of course, George W. Bush and John McCain aren't alone in diagnosing Americans' economic distress as just a figment of our imaginations. As McCain adviser Phil Gramm insisted just last week, "this is a mental recession."