SAGE ADVICE: Turn back time

Sage Advice

My wife noticed it first because she notices those sorts of things.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
I had or at least thought I had, so I said “sure.” Trouble is, when someone asks “did you see that?” they don’t usually mean the obvious thing that you had to have seen. So really I hadn’t seen it, if that makes sense.
I watched for it the next time the 30-second Mark Warner commercial aired, which I think was like 45 seconds later. Sure enough, there it was. The former governor pleading his case to be the next senator, standing in front of a gas station sign that you’d swear, until you went to YouTube to slow it down, freeze the frame and debate with the folks near or walking by your desk, says a dollar something for gas.
Here at work, upon careful and professional inspection (I hit the pause button on the YouTube thingy-mabob) decided that the sign wasn’t filmed when Gov. Warner was Gov. Warner, but really says four-something for gas. The angle, we think, cuts off all but the one-like stick of the four.
The question is do politicians, especially successful ones, especially ones as successful as Warner have unplanned, unscripted, unnoticed moments in their campaign ads? I hold that they don’t. If they do, I sure wouldn’t vote for them. I want a governor, a senator, a president, etc. who crosses all the t’s and dots all the i’s. If sometimes they cross an i and dot a t, so be it.
That’s what I think Warner did, by the way. He crossed an i and dotted a t. He knew, or found out soon enough, that the pole at that particular Virginia gas station sliced off the better, more expensive, part of a four, rendering it a one to everyone but the poor saps paying four something for a gallon of gas.
When you see the ad, the message couldn’t be clearer. Vote for me and I’ll turn back time in a very non-Cher sort of way to when gas was a dollar something a gallon and all was right in the heavens. While you’re processing that promise, wondering if it could possibly be true and didn’t you think of adding hydrogen to the internal combustion mix on the promise that it would squeak out a few more miles per gallon, Warner shows pictures of angry looking Middle Easterners, saying we’ve got to stop relying on people who hate us. He also says he’ll string up and taunt oil speculators, or something like that, and push the world toward a renewable energy one, even if those turbines kill every bird between here and the time gasoline prices are again a dollar something a gallon. Then he shows a picture of an oil rig drilling off the nation’s coast, saying he wants to drill offshore now. He ignores, in the same way the camera ignored that three-quarters of a four, the fact that as governor he vetoed a bill that would asked the feds to lift the ban on offshore drilling.
Doesn’t matter.
Mark Warner is going to give us a dollar-something a gallon gasoline.
It’s the best political ad ever.