John McCain likes to make hay out of the fact that his campaign was pretty much broke for a spell last year. Here’s a representative exchange on Letterman:

LETTERMAN: You got into financial trouble, and all of that changed, turned around. What did you do—did you ever consider getting out?

MCCAIN: Well, I was riding on a well-known airline in group D, you know, that’s the one where you get to sit in the center seat between two heavyset Americans… I was carrying my own bags, which was good training, good experience.

As the New York TImes reports, McCain didn’t so much fly coach on a well-known airline as benefit from a cut rate on his wife’s cushy corporate jet:

The McCain campaign turned to using the jet last August, a time when it faced mounting debts and the possibility of financial collapse. It stopped doing so in March, those records indicate.

During the first half of 2007, a time when Mr. McCain’s campaign did not use his wife’s jet, it paid out over $1.04 million for travel on noncommercial planes, F.E.C. records indicate. Over the second half of the year, when that jet was used almost constantly for campaign-related purposes, his campaign’s total spending for noncommercial flying was about one-half that much, or $542,160, those records suggest.

Very thrifty of you, Senator.