By now, you've probably heard that McCain's campaign was sued by Jackson Browne for using, sans permission, Browne's classic "Running on Empty" in campaign ads in Ohio. The ads were apparently targeted at Obama's stance on offshore drilling.
What's interesting to me is that McCain is stepping it, metaphorically. Someone who bills his campaign as the "straight talk express" is in dangerous territory here. It suggests to me a nice campaign for Obama that would serve to define McCain. It also suggests to me a criterion for VP that I haven't seen tendered explicitly, but looks to me more like a vital quality that should eliminate a few candidates (Bayh, Kaine) and open up the door for others (Schweitzer, Napolitano).
Ok, Imagine this:
--Obama actually gets permission to use the song (he can afford it; he might have to give up on nuclear power, though)
--his camp produces ads, featuring this song, and the lede "Straight talk express . . . running on empty." Each add would feature McCain double-speak and expedient changes of mind (say, on torture or offshore drilling).
This would play into the idea of taking on McCain at one of his strengths, corrupting the "straight talk" frame for McCain. Remember, Lakoff tells us that you don't make up a frame and immediately get salience with it; playing on an existing frame is actually the way to get a wedge into voters' mental map. The running-on-empty counterframe would help Obama's camp to simplify some of the rather abstract critiques of red-meat energy issues--like drilling now and drilling here. And it would make for an attractive frame in which to take on McCain's general incoherence and cynical flip-flopping.
Finally, this sort of attack dovetails with what I think is going to be the key criterion for picking a VP. McCain is in a box, trying to please his base and maverick up the independents. So far, the media has been pretty gentle in keeping the basic incoherence of his campaign from being an issue for him, and some obvious ways of framing these things just don't sing out--e.g, "incoherence" is not going to catch on with voters like "flip flopper" did; "Flip-flopper" is played out and is not going to have cache in this election.
Moreover, these labels don't tell the full story. The key here is not just tagging McCain as a base politician but showing that what seems to be "Maverickness" is really a character flaw. Obama's VP, then, aside from all the demands to be able to carry a state or shore up a weakness or re-double the "change" mantel, should be a fire-breathing monster, focused and strong, pinning McCain down again and again on a series of McCain-vs.-McCain "wedge" issues, forcing him to pit himself against either his base or moderate independents again and again. Somebody who has taken on the right before and has shown themselves to be tough and strong and able to fight back against them (though this time, this person would be in the lead). Someone like: