Where there’s conflict-of-interest smoke . . .

Sen. John McCain has woven a tangled web of erratic behavior, grandstanding and BS in recent days, the better to deceive.

In his latest New York Times column, Frank Rich unravels the why and wherefore (emphasis ours):

What we were learning — through The New York Times, Newsweek and Roll Call — was ugly. Davis Manafort, the lobbying firm owned by McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, had received $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac from late 2005 until last month. This was in addition to the $30,000 a month that Davis was paid from 2000 to 2005 by the so-called Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy organization that he headed and that was financed by Freddie and Fannie to fight regulation.

The McCain campaign tried to pre-emptively deflect such revelations by reviving the old Rove trick of accusing your opponent of your own biggest failings. It ran attack ads about Obama’s own links to the mortgage giants. But neither of the former Freddie-Fannie executives vilified in those ads, Franklin Raines and James Johnson, had worked at those companies lately or are currently associated with the Obama campaign. (Raines never worked for the campaign at all.) By contrast, Davis is the tip of the Freddie-Fannie-McCain iceberg. McCain’s senior adviser, his campaign’s vice chairman, his Congressional liaison and the reported head of his White House transition team all either made fortunes from recent Freddie-Fannie lobbying or were players in firms that did.

If anyone — Republican, independent, Green, Paulite, whatever — thinks McCain’s rat pack of lobbyists, well-connected handlers and Rovian “strategists” will voluntarily go away or be banished after his January inauguration, if God forbid that should happen, they are beyond naive.

America has suffered enough cronyism, kow-towing to corporations and crooked CEO’s, and outright corruption over the last eight years. The fix has been in since George W. Bush and Halliburton/KBR’s inside guy Dick Cheney first darkened the White House door in 2001.

Then there was Jack Abramoff, who we were told only showed up at the White House a few times. But soon it was revealed Abramoff had prowled the halls there so much that one staffer said he thought Abramoff worked there too.

We’ve lived through a horror movie. Let’s pass on the sequel.

Vote for Obama and Biden, because our country’s future is a terrible thing to waste.