It s July and the air conditioners are humming. Summer tourists are
driving.
The lights are back on in California. A recent Fox News poll shows
that only
15 percent of all voters believe we are having an energy crisis.
The rationale George Bush and Dick Cheney used to sell their pro-oil
producer/anti-environment program to the American people has vanished
in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Indeed, the Fox News poll suggests that
only
half even feel that an energy shortfall is in the cards for the future.
From the beginning, Bush and Cheney have tried to persuade Americans
that an unmet national demand for energy necessitated Arctic and offshore
drilling, power plant construction and even a return to nuclear power.
The scenario was that as soon as America faced climbing prices at the
pump
and blackouts in hot weather their environmentalism would wilt and
they would
gladly sanction the enactment of a draconian program of energy generation.
Just as Ronald Reagan began his first term by trying to focus national
attention
on the communist threat in Central America, so Bush and Cheney have
harped
on the coming energy shortfall since the start of the year. But without
an energy
crisis, they find themselves high and dry, having gambled and having
lost.
Lacking the spur of unmet energy demand, there is no justification
for the Bush/Cheney
effort to move ahead with their efforts to turn around a decade of
environmental progress.
From the beginning the focus of the current administration on fabricating
a sense
of energy crisis has been suspect. With the ties of both the president
and the vice
president to the energy industry, tens of millions of Americans feel
that they are
being sold a bill of goods by self-interested actors. The same sickly
smell of special
interest influence envelops the Bush enthusiasm for the missile defense
program and
arouses the suspicion of Americans.
Without the animation of public opinion to kindle the political energy
to sustain the
ambitious energy agenda they have proposed, Bush and Cheney need to
modify
their goals and lower their sights. To do otherwise is to risk the
appearance of
obsession with the issue rather than just simple conviction.
Will energy be the Bush equivalent of Lyndon Johnson s fixation on Vietnam
or
the sequel to Hillary Clinton s healthcare reform? Will his parochial
exposure to
the arguments of the energy interests lead the former oilman to emphasizing
the
issue amid a national climate that ranges from disinterest to outright
opposition?
Now that the tax cut is passed and education reform seems well on its
way, Bush's
energy agenda will take center stage. The Democrats will be talking
about the patients
bill of rights and the prescription drug benefit for the elderly while
Bush is pushing his
energy agenda. It s hard to see which will be more destructive of the
president s
popularity, his agenda or that of his partisan opponents.
It is high time that Bush and Cheney both got the message that they
are leading where
the country does not want to go on the energy issue and that they are
doing so without
the expected cover of a national demand for energy to meet an obvious
shortage.
Bush needs to move to the center on the Kyoto protocol by grasping at
the compromise
suggested by Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi using 2000 as the base
year and reducing
the U.S. reduction target from 7 percent to 5.5 percent. He should
ratchet up his program
to encourage fuel-efficient cars and do more to focus attention on
alternate energy sources.
George Bush and Dick Cheney are not anti-environment. They have both
simply been
exposed for too long to the siren song of energy producers without
the counterbalancing
influence of environmentalists and conservation advocates. They need
to look beyond
what they learned in Texas and Wyoming and pay attention to national
public opinion.
Dick Morris is a lying bastard, a well-known stab-in-the-back,
a toe-sucker, a weasel
who screws prostitutes and then screws his president
and is now screwing Weak & Stupid,
but sometimes his political insights are semi-valuable..