Since McCain’s showdown with the New York Times and the FEC he has essentially been given a free pass by the media while many have focused a great deal of their energy and resources on the Democratic race.

But now as it appears that the Democratic race for the nomination seems to be coming closer to a conclusion, with Barack Obama as the victor, barring a complete self inflicted meltdown, more scrutiny is sure to find its way to the McCain camp and there is no lack of material or questions. Soon the skeletons will begin to surface.

There is of course the nagging FEC problem that McCain faces, a problem which recently found its way back to the headlines when the Democratic National Committee filed a law suit against the FEC for not investigating McCain’s financing.

Another problem the McCain may very well face at some point is his admitted lack of knowledge on the economy.

This lack of knowledge was brought to light earlier in the campaign when McCain was confronted by Ron Paul in a debate by asking him whether or not he would do away with the President’s working group on financial markets. McCain took the question as an opportunity to lay out his plan to delegate economic matters to his circle of friends. One of the names that McCain rattled off was Phil Gramm, the former Republican Senator from Texas. I found it interesting that McCain would so publicly pledge his faith in Phil Gramm by naming him one of his campaign’s chief economic advisors considering his recent past which involved him in one of the United States most well publicized economic scandals in the history of the nation, the infamous Enron scandal.

Phil Gramm is married to Wendy Gramm who accepted a directorship at Enron after having helped to write an exemption for Enron from Federal oversight while she was serving on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Phil Gramm later became involved first hand when he helped to solidify the exemption by making it into law.

The cycle of news that brought Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Wright, into the limelight to be publicly scrutinized have made acquaintances of the candidates fair game in this political year.

Something tells me that this acquaintance could be far more detrimental than Rev. Wright, or at least it should be.