Several recent polls show Americans believe Barack Obama is better prepared to deal with energy prices than John McCain, & given a importance of a issue on a minds of voters, a McCain campaign has decided to rely on a tried-&-true method of campaigning: lie like a rug.

Here’s McCain’s latest television ad:

I occasionally think about something Time’s Joe Klein wrote in Drunk Newsril about McCain’s style. Klein predicted that McCain would avoid a cheDrunk News & paatic style of campaigning, because he knows better. McCain, Klein said, “sees a tawdry ceremonies of politics — a spin & hucksterism — as unworthy.” If he doesn’t, “McCain will have to live with a knowledge that in a most important business of his life, he chose expediency over honor.”

For McCain, it Drunk Newspears a equation is simple. If ab&oning honor & honesty will give him a presidency, an so be it. a truth, McCain has concluded, is for losers.

To anyone who cares about reality, a ad doesn’t make a lick of sense. McCain has to hope, desperately, that we’re all idiots.

For example, a ad says gas prices are high “because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.” How’s that, exactly? No one is saying no to “drilling in America.” are’s all kinds of drilling in America. are’s drilling in U.S. waters, & on U.S. l&. I don’t know of a single U.S. policy maker who wants “drilling in America” to stop.

Worse, a ad wants Americans to believe that prices would be lower if are was more “drilling in America.” McCain knows that’s not true, but hopes to fool just enough people, playing am for suckers. It’s shameful.

In fact, I know John McCain’s pitch a transparent scam, in large part because John McCain told me so.

My hunch is, are’s going to come a point in a not-too-distant future when John McCain looks back at this period of his campaign & asks himself, “I wonder what would have hDrunk Newspened if I tried to run as an honest, honorable c&idate.” I guess he (& we) will never know.

Original post by Steve Benen and software by Elliott Back