The Washington Post reports,

Highlighting the challenge a far-flung campaign faces when it comes to message discipline, Romney has had to distance himself from his top economics adviser after Mankiw — a Princeton-trained economist now teaching at Harvard — voiced his support for an immigration bill Romney strongly opposes.

Mankiw just doesn’t seem to get it when it comes to anti-foreign bias. This is reminiscent of the trouble he got into over outsourcing.

The last paragraph of the Post story amused me.

Madden, the Romney spokesman, said: “I’ve never met a voter who walked into a voting booth and pulled a lever for a candidate because they have a certain adviser as part of their campaign team. I believe voters vote for a president based on that person’s ideas and their vision for the future.”

I’ve never met Mr. Madden, but I would tell him that in 1992 I voted for Bill Clinton against George Bush the elder precisely because Alan Blinder was one of Clinton’s economic advisers.

And I’ll say this for my decision to vote “Blinderly.” All things considered, the economic advice Clinton got–and, more importantly, took–was pretty good.

From what I understand, Mrs. Clinton was not as cozy with the economists.