Last week we noted that John McCain had managed to complete a full 180-degree reversal on his position on offshore drilling in a mere 18-day period. Now he’s topped that record by reversing a stated position within a single news cycle. Traveling in Colombia, he told reporters that he wouldn’t criticize Obama while he was overseas, but on the plane a few hours earlier he had criticized Obama while speaking to these same reporters for, what else, changing his position on trade:

“I believe that partisanship ends at the water’s edge,” McCain said emphatically, when asked about Obama at a press conference at the Colombian Presidential retreat here.

But on the inaugural flight of the Straight Talk Express — airborne edition -– McCain felt freer to let loose.

On the plane, he blasted Obama’s opposition to the proposed Colombia free trade deal.

“He’s a protectionist and anti-free trade,” McCain said. “Now he has switched, I mean remarkably, from saying that he would unilaterally renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement in the strongest possible terms in Ohio – he went to North Carolina and said well, I’m for free trade.

“It wouldn’t surprise me to see him switch on this one,” McCain said.

For his next trick, McCain will reverse himself before he even speaks.