More straight talk from John McCain:

NARRATOR: Gas prices. $4, $5, no end in sight. Because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America. No to independence from foreign oil. Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump? (chant) Obama, Obama. One man knows we must now drill more in America and rescue our family budgets. Don’t hope for more energy, vote for it. McCain.

MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approved this message.

Attributing rising gas prices to Barack Obama is absurd, which is why the flaccid New York Times fact-check is so frustrating. The main claim of McCain’s ad is that Obama is somehow responsible for the increase in prices at the pump. But Larry Rother’s “accuracy” section spends over one hundred words on various details, asides, and non-sequiturs before finally getting around to mentioning that there’s no plausible way to blame Obama for the increase in global demand for oil:

ACCURACY Mr. Obama is not against all drilling for oil and gas, only drilling offshore, a crucial word in the debate on energy policy but one never mentioned here. Increasing domestic oil production is also by no means the only or even main road to long-term energy independence, as both candidates have emphasized on the campaign trail by endorsing alternatives like solar and wind power and corn-based ethanol (in Mr. Obama’s case) and nuclear energy (Mr. McCain). Mr. Obama, who has proposed a $150 billion decade-long government-backed effort to help develop clean-energy sources, does oppose the temporary gasoline tax rebate that Mr. McCain favors, calling it an election-year gimmick that does not bring meaningful relief to ordinary Americans. But that is a position many economists and energy experts share. Finally, even before the recent spike, oil prices had been rising for a decade, the result of a variety of political and economic factors in places as far afield as China, India, Venezuela and Nigeria. So it is difficult to understand how Mr. Obama, a first-term senator, can be held responsible for that phenomenon.

The conclusion to the fact-check then briefly describes the ad as “misleading on nearly every substantive point” before moving on to ad hoc analysis of its effectiveness and speculation about its impact — two tics of “objective” coverage of political ads:

SCORECARD Aside from correctly stating current gasoline prices, “Pump” is misleading on nearly every substantive point. But it is shrewdly conceived and may prove to be effective with undecided voters upset about having to pay as much as $100 to fill their gas tanks, yet uncertain as to the causes of the squeeze on their budgets.

With fact-checking like this, political candidates who run misleading ads have nothing to fear. (And most newspapers don’t even run fact-checks!)