McCain Cashing in on Big Oil Bucks? Well, yes, but…

The Washington Post attempts to make some hay over oil company contributions to the McCain campaign following his call for increased domestic oil production. Here’s the lede, just to set the tone of the piece.

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling. Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month — three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban — compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

They follow these figures up with one of the usual expert opinions.

“The timing was significant,” said David Donnelly, the national campaigns director of the Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonpartisan campaign finance reform group that conducted the analysis of McCain’s oil industry contributions. “This is a case study of how a candidate can change a policy position in the interest of raising money.”

Interesting, but I have to say disingenuous as well as missing the point entirely. Is it surprising that oil industry executives would be more amenable to donating after McCain’s decision on drilling? Not at all, but I would submit that the cash was merely a predictable side effect. Did McCain hope to profit from taking this policy position? Absolutely he did, but not in cash… he did it for votes – for the support of the American public who are frustrated by high energy prices and a lack of coherent government policy in this area.

The article is eager to point out his “change of position” on the subject of domestic drilling (while not going so far as to invoke the dreaded “flip flop” phrase) but such is the price of winning elections, along with the trust and backing of the voters. There are several issues where Senator Obama has been accused of the flip-flop which were cut from the same cloth as McCain’s move on this topic. Conditions in the country and around the world change over time. The politician who hopes to succeed will have to adapt to these conditions. On the question of energy policy, McCain has done this. The cash, while doubtless welcome, was hardly the motivation. The $1.1 million represented less than two percent of the candidate’s take for the month, and it wouldn’t have been worth a bucket of warm spit if he had been moving to an energy policy which the majority of Americans rejected.

If you wish, you may accuse McCain of “pandering for votes” with this move. But suggesting he did it in some desperate dash for campaign dollars is a poor substitute for political analysis.