GOLDEN, Colo. –

Awaiting Barack Obama here at the jam-packed Colorado School of Mines.

And though the Obama campaign rails constantly about GOP attempts to make a big election “about small things,” this morning the campaign and the DNC are enjoying gales of laughter at the expense of John McCain’s economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

In a session with reporters today, Holtz-Eakin was asked:

Q: “What has he (McCain) done on (the) Commerce Committee (which McCain chaired from 2003-2005) that will convince Americans he understands financial markets?

Holtz-Eakin:  “He didn’t have jurisdiction over financial markets, but first and foremost he did this (Holtz-Eakin holds up his BlackBerry), telecommunications of the United states, the premier innovation in the past 15 years comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.”

Q: Did he regulate the industry?

“He both regulated and de-regulated the industry as appropriate.”

Privately, McCain’s camp knows this a significant gaffe, eerily reminiscent of Al Gore’s much-maligned (though contextually within bounds) assertion that through his work to boost federal research he helped create the internet.

The only saving grace for McCain is that he didn’t say it on camera.

There’s now an effort in McCain-land to portray Holtz-Eakin as bungling an attempt at humor. Those present say there was no sense Holtz-Eakin was trying to be funny, even allowing that a former director of the Congressional Budget Office might be uniquely able to disguise a joke.

Bill Burton, spokesman for Obama, said the following via e-mail sent to BlackBerries across the land:

“If John McCain hadn’t said that ‘the fundamentals of our economy are strong’ on the day of one of our nation’s worst financial crises, the claim that he invented the BlackBerry would have been the most preposterous thing said all week.”

A senior adviser to McCain, Matt McDonald, said that the senator “laughed” when he Holtz-Eakin’s  comment.

“He would not claim to be the inventor of anything, much less the BlackBerry,” McDonald said. “This was obviously a boneheaded joke by a staffer.”

It wasn’t obvious to those who witnessed Holtz-Eakin’s BlackBerry brandishing. What is obvious is that “small things” in this campaign clearly are in the eye of the beholder.