 McCain himself also defended both the Palin pick and the decision not to attack on the Wright controversy.The staffers agreed that McCain's remark that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong" at the beginning of the financial crisis had been a blunder, and said that the subsequent suspension of the campaign was an attempt to recover from the remark but had led to charges that McCain was erratic.Overall, a deputy campaign manager said, "We could spend [a long time] talking about the strategy of the McCain campaign because we had so many of them."