Straight talk?

David Roberts flags this exchange between John McCain and Katie Couric:

Couric: Why has [addressing global warming] taken so long, Senator?

McCain: Special interests. It's the special interests. It's the utility companies and the petroleum companies and other special interests. They're the ones that have blocked progress in the congress of the United States and the administration. That's a little straight talk.

Notice anything missing from McCain's answer?

Why yes I do, and I think it's revealed nicely by this handy picture, charting oil and gas industry donations to both parties:

Now this isn't to say anything like that John McCain has been the worst Republican on climate. Far from it. But all too often politicians straight-facedly congratulate themselves for engaging in "a little straight talk" when they say something totally witless like "powerful interests have blocked progress". Meanwhile, powerful interests aren't elected officials and wouldn't be powerful unless actual elected officials made them powerful by giving them what they ask for over and over again. Real straight talk (or whatever you want to call it) is when a politician like John McCain ignores threats and bribes from wrong-headed lobbyists, calls out their influence publicly, and calls out his party for selling out the country. This, of course, almost never happens in real life, and when it does, the politician usually invents a fun new term--like "straight talk express"--as a tribute to his own principle before being shunted by his colleagues and losing his next election.

I don't know how you fix the incentive problem here. And I suppose the fact that earning a reputation as a bold truth-teller in politics doesn't require any boldness just emerges naturally out of the soft bigotry of low expectation. But it's a really pathetic phenomenon.