He's Not For Anything, He's For Everything

“Now, nuclear power alone is not enough. Drilling alone is not enough. We need to do all this and more. That is why I am calling for an ‘all of the above’ approach.”

— John McCain

Ow, my head is spinning.

Forget “flip flopping” or “I was for it before I was against it.”  The McCain campaign is reaching for a whole new hypocrisy-transcendent state known as: “all of the above” (…in which any policy, or picture, can simultaneously mean one thing and its opposite).  Take the frame above, for example, from the “Broken” ad, released Tuesday touting McCain as a “maverick” and Washington reformer.  The key narrative states:

“Only McCain has taken on big tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties.  He’ll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again.”

You might note that the frame, however, immediately precedes the phrase: “battle big oil.”

So, McCain is going to take on folks like Buxton Oil in New Hampshire?  Although that’s where the footage was shot, McCain’s appearance there on July 22nd was a friendly one in which he met with the company owner, Donna Buxton, got on top of a home heating oil truck and advocated for continued federal aid for consumers to help pay for home heating oil.

But then, the most contradictory pic of the week has to be this one, an indictment of “campaign-by-gimmick,” or what looks like the missile it was supposed to be, or an ironic visual coming from a candidate no one has ever been able to gauge.

(Edited 11 AM PST)

(image 1 & 2: McCain for President.  image 3 & 4:  Mary Altaffer/AP.  Enrico Femi Nuclear Plant. August 5, 2008. Newport, MI;  Aug. 6, 2008. Dublin, Ohio.)