Campaign AdWatch: 'Alaska Maverick' Strains To Contrast

Here's the new advertisement from the McCain campaign, "Alaska Maverick," which extends the GOP's last ditch efforts to keep the "experience" argument alive after McCain chose Sarah Palin to be his vice-president. Naturally, the case could be made if anyone actually believed that al Qaeda could be defeated and the economy revived through a sustained commitment to the proper field dressing of moose, but even McCain-fan Mike Murphy is throwing a wet blanket on this line of attack. Murphy was just on TV talking about this ad, and he told Chuck Todd, "I love John McCain to death, but this is the stupidest thing in the world."

And it's true! Laura McGann brought word from Alaska yesterday that Palin had, in her own words, pooh-poohed her own executive experience, mocking it as "not rocket science." Strangely, for all the "not rocket science" nature of the work, Palin was unique among Wasilla mayors in that she still needed help. As ProgressiveAlaska notes: "...when Palin was first elected mayor...in 1996, she had to hire a city manager. When her predecessors had occupied the office, they did that job themselves. There went $60,000 per year." (Much more on that via Andrew Sullivan.)

The whole attempt at contrasting Palin as someone who stands up to "oil producers" is similarly baffling, considering that McCain's been broadly signaling that his presidency will be a drill-crazy bonanza for the oil industry.

[WATCH.]