“Well I’ve always had a deep respect, and I mean that most sincerely. The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think. Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?”

 –From Pink Floyd’s 1975 song, “Have A Cigar”

Last week Rob Caldwell, a reporter for NBC’s Portland affiliate caused a flutter that may yet yield a hurricane after airing an interview with Republican presidential contender John McCain.

Whether or not McCain thought he was going to be pitched softball questions (which is a common metaphor and in no way meant to demean his female running mate by implying it is easier to hit softballs than baseballs) or he felt he could phone in his remote interview broadcast in a tiny market within a non-competitive state, the result should give anyone considering the Republican ticket pause.

Caldwell ignored questions about on which four-legged animals it is appropriate to put lipstick nor did or try to pin down who drew first blood of negativity and distortions in the campaigns’ commercials and instead focused what, exactly makes Sarah Palin qualified to be the 74-year-old’s vice president.

McCain came across as completely flummoxed as he blurted out a series of non-sequiturs so erroneous, he may have boosted employment in the nation’s fact-checking organizations.

Caldwell began by asking a question about the party’s line that Palin is a reformer, an image that seems to be withering like a hothouse flower (again, it’s the image, not the nominee that’s a hothouse flower in this metaphor), as journalists learn about questionable reimbursements and a culture of Wasilla-centric cronyism that accompanied Palin to Juneau.

McCain gave Palin credit for a $40 billion pipeline that exists only as a dotted line along a map, which may never be built and yet still cost Alaskan taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. McCain said Palin “was responsible” for the pipeline as if there’s already natural gas flowing from the North Slope to your home.

He listed a number of the world’s trouble spots, describing Palin’s position on all of them as “right” and the other side’s as “wrong.”

It was news to the world that Palin had positions on any of these issues at all. Where did they come from? How long has she had them? How did she develop them? That she was right and Obama was wrong is all we need to know. These are highly complicated, decades-old problems fraught with ambiguity, but who wants complicated? McCain went so far as to declare her unstated foreign policy as “right” and Obama’s as “wrong.”

That is quite a track record.

When Caldwell asked the senator for an example, McCain declared Palin “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.”

Wow.

“We’re just knocked out. We heard about the sell out. You gotta get an album out. You owe it to the people. We’re so happy we can hardly count.”

It’s a stunning strategy: Choose an unknown and act outraged when people try to pick at the veneer constructed around her even as you push her further and further into the limelight. Hope the time runs out before too many people start asking too many questions. Focus on inconsequential things.

It seems to have worked for a couple weeks, but it remains a very open question whether this strategy has legs (a common phrase in no way related to the two shapely appendages between the bottom of Palin’s skirt and the top of her high heels).

There’s mounting evidence that it won’t work. The state of the economy is way past vague bromides about gas taxes and earmarks. Things are seriously broken and between the writing of this piece and the time it reaches your fingertips, things may have gone from worse to worst-case. By the time November comes around, construction projects like roads and bridges and pipeline (to nowhere and elsewhere) may be exactly what we need to keep the economy from oblivion. But the economy never interested McCain all that much and his running mate presides over a state with a population smaller than Maine’s and counts on federal largess as a major source of income.

“Everybody else is just green. Have you seen the chart? It’s a helluva start. It could be made into a monster if we all pull together as a team.”

There’s a sneaking suspicion some Republicans think they have an ace up their sleeve – there are enough people in this country excited by Palin because of what she is (One Of Us) that enough people will overlook all of Palin and McCain’s actual flaws and believe all of Obama’s imaginary ones, because in comports to their version of reality.

I don’t believe there are, but I do believe there are people with much to gain by keeping those waters muddy.

“And did we tell you the name of the game, boy? We call it ‘Riding the Gravy Train.’”

–Ward Peck