Not Palpatinesque, But Not Bad

These two McCain ads, run in tandem, make a largely effective PR sledghammer with which to drive home the domestic policy wedge issue of the 2008 campaign cycle:

FWIW, a gas tax "holiday" and alternative energy boondoggles ARE "gimmicks".  Problem is, Lucifer isn't even proposing his own gimmickry, much less any REAL solution that would shrink the regulatory reach of the federal government and remove the greenstremist tourniquet from our energy trachea.  All about which he is apparently capable is glorifying scarcity as morally virtuous and snarking about Sailor's own "flip-flops," a tack which is unlikely to gain any traction because unlike the Chosen One's, which are driven by transparently phony PR expediency and absolutely nothing else, the Sith Lord's are, at least in this case, a response to changing circumstances that have impacted the pocketbooks of every American.

Having created the contrast, ad #2 moves in for the kill:

I'm not thrilled with the reference to "bipartisanism," especially as none of what Team Queeg is calling the "Lexington Project" (Lexington as in the first battle of the War for American Independence....Manhattan Project....) outside of wind-up cars and windmills will EVER see the light of day while the Democrats are running Congress, despite Jazz Shaw's naive urgings.

Nor do I care for the "great national cause" marketing ploy.  The drive to beat Hitler to the atomic bomb was a matter of national survival, and the Apollo moon program to which ad #2 makes reference had the rather gargantuan selling point of seeing a man standing on the surface of Luna in front of the entire planet as the PR payoff.  Let pump prices subside fifty to seventy-five cents (even under four bucks) and, in our short-attention-span culture, the edge will be off this issue like it never existed.  Can anybody see the overcoddled, economically ignorant American public being galvanized by such an otherwise dry national mission for the next seventeen years?

But the "putting country first" slogan isn't bad, if it isn't terribly original.

Fortunately for Maverick, all he needs it for is the next four months.  Then he can go back to crossing the aisle, putting on the other team's uniform, and singing their fight song from the Oval Office instead of the Senate cloakroom.

Also lucky for him that despicable tendency isn't venue-specific.