No Way to Greatness

Barack Obama is fixated on solar panels. In his presidency so far, he has had two momentous speeches. The first was his Gulf oil spill speech, and the second was this State of the Union speech, momentous only because he made it so by his declaration of our Sputnik Moment. (You might say that I've forgotten about the Arizona massacre speech, but I think that the event and the speech will slip everyone's mind before long.)

In both cases, he made trivial green energy initiatives the focus of our attention. In his first oval office address when he talked to us about the national crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, he used the occasion to underscore the importance of energy efficient windows and solar panels. In his second SOTU address, he brought us back to the same fierce urgency. Solar Shingles.

This is not the interstate highway system or the Apollo space program.

Daniel Henninger is also puzzled by this hip leftist "obsession" that distracts the president from the matters at hand. ("A Presidency to Nowhere," WSJ, Jan. 27, 2011)

So what explains this?

(A) Unlike Bill Clinton who genuinely turned to the center after his midterm defeat, our president is a true believer, i.e. an ideologue. He can't think any other way.

(B) Henninger says he wants to just run out the clock for two years pretending to be bipartisan with the GOP and of one mind with the electorate.

(C) He is the anti-colonialist that Dinesh D'Souza says he is, and all this solar panel as national everything-policy is a way of weaning America off of everyone else's stuff.

Obama's First Oval Office Speech

In his first Oval Office speech, President Obama tells us we're a bunch of oil junkies in need of green detox. Inspiring.

Because there has never been a leak of this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology. That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge...As a result of these efforts, we have directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology. In the coming days and weeks, these efforts should capture up to 90% of the oil leaking out of the well.

In other words, the president was quick off the mark with a science team. He lost no time. For its part, however, BP was foot dragging and directionless. But after Team Obama figured everything out scientifically, the president and his people took control, told BP what to do, and now the gusher will soon become a trickle. Hurray!

But anyone who has agonized through the drama of these eight weeks knows that this account is a fiction. There was a period when the administration was simply not engaged. Then there was a monitoring of the situation as BP attempted various capping methods. Then followed the present period of bluster as the administration became aware of how bad it looked politically to be simply looking on with concern.

So the president has decided to go to war: "we will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long it takes." He will fight it on the beaches! Having done FDR with the recession, he is now Churchill with the oil spill. He lays out a "battle plan." He has authorized deployment the National Guard (even to help with clerical work). These "troops" along with "thousands of ships and other vessels" and 30,000 additional personnel are a "mobilization" to fight back "the approaching oil" which he calls a "siege."

Of course, this is not a war that the government is capable of fighting. Only BP has the expertise and technology to get the job done, and that has proven to be shaky. But Democratic governments, especially one headed by Barack Obama, cannot stand to be viewed as anything less than omnipotent. So the president has turned to frothy declarations of being in charge.

From the bluster stage, we enter a stage of new danger: government threats, bullying, and revenge as political theatre.

I refuse to let that happen. Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.

Notice the self-reference: "I refuse to let that happen." "I will...inform him." Is he forcing BP into this arrangement based on his personal authority? Is there any legal basis for this? I haven’t heard of any. Have we departed completely from the rule of law to gangsta gov’ment?

Then he assigns a share of blame to the American people for our "addiction to fossil fuels." (He says it twice.) Addiction? We have a prosperous way of life that requires energy derived from oil and coal. Where's the addiction? Is it in our unwillingness to live they way they do in Afghanistan? Or is it our "century-long" refusal to switch to cleaner, greener forms of energy because we get the shakes if we're not burning the black stuff? No, that makes no sense. It was a presidential backhand across the public face. "Get off the oil, ya dumb slut!" Picture an alcoholic so desperate for a belt that he's drinking shoe polish. Similarly, he tells us that we are so desperate for oil and we have so depleted the earth's reserves that we are drilling a mile below the surface of the water...and now this! He doesn't mention that BP was out there with the other companies because his environmentalist dominated government wouldn't let them drill in the shallows, to say nothing of ANWAR in Alaska. No, we're the problem, and the president is going to help us dry out.

Our recovery from addiction will take a long time and will be expensive, but so was World War II and the space program that landed a man on the moon, he reminds us. So let's rise to challenge! Those were clear national security threats, however. The one involved Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and the other the USSR. The addiction threat is not so clear. Tonight, America was ready for an oil-spill-and-what-we're-doing-about-it speech. The connection between the oil spill and the need to get off oil entirely will strike most people as a leap, as indeed it should. If the president's goal tonight was not to let a crisis go to waste, but to mobilize a panicked American public behind his carbon capping and taxing legislation, he will close out the week a very disappointed man.

And here's news. Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann laying into Obama for his speech.



Where's the leadership? No tingle here.

***************

James Fallows, 25 years with The Atlantic and former Jimmy Carter speech writer, gives us three ways the Obama speech failed. Interestingly, he reminds me that George W. Bush in his 2006 State of the Union address told us, "America is addicted to oil." I guess that didn't upset me because he did not have a record as a chide who is constantly apologizing for his country. But he had no business making the charge either.

P.S. I also noticed those flapping hands at the bottom of the screen. Didn't they do a once through? Why wouldn't someone catch that, and advise him to keep his hands still?

Clive Crook, also of The Atlantic, says, "he would have been wise to give no speech rather than this speech."

And we'll give the final word to George Will: "Word Spill: Our Demosthenes is Alibi Ike." He says, "The news about his speech is that it is no longer news that he often gives bad speeches. This one, however, was almost magnificently awful." Whoever wrote this speech should be fired, and whoever asked for it (the guy who delivered it) should feel life changing embarrassment.

The "Energy Policy" of the Dems--NO YOU CAN"T

See if you can detect a pattern here:

"When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, you know, under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers."




“No coal plants here in America! Build 'em, if they're gonna build 'em, over there [China] and make 'em clean because they're killing ya.”




"Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It's global warming. It's ruining our country. It's ruining our world."




"So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them."




No matter what area of policy, no matter which part of the "national interest" you consider, (many aspects of which have been addressed on this blog) this hard left juggernaut we see bearing down on us like a runaway coal train brings with it nothing of benefit to this country. It's hard to imagine what our acknowledged enemies would do differently to harm our economy.

If some foreign enemy moved to stop us from drilling our own oil, while at the same time finding a way to shut down our coal industry, I hope Americans would recognize it as an act of aggression. It looks to me like everything the Democrats are planning is an act of aggression, many times in the literal sense of the word.

Where do Democrats want to take this country, and what is it going to look like when we get there?

Pickens Has an Oil Plan. Who'll Pick It Up?

Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has entered the energy debate that is becoming an ever deeper concern for American voters as the price of gas and eventually home heating oil climb. In today's Wall Street Journal ("My Plan to Escape the Grip of Foreign Oil") he presents his plan "to reduce America's foreign oil imports by more than one-third in the next five to 10 years." You can find it more fully elaborated on his website, http://www.pickensplan.com/.

"Foreign oil," he says, "is at the intersection of America's three most important issues: the economy, the environment and our national security." Though he mentions new jobs and the "carbon footprint," his concern is primarily national security. "With all my experience, I've never been as worried about our energy security as I am now. Like many of us, I ignored what was happening. Now our country faces what I believe is the most serious situation since World War II." Our oil imports have gone from 24% of consumption in 1973 (the year of the OPEC oil embargo) to 42$ in 1990 (the year of the first Gulf War) to 70% today. Of course, the economy has multiplied in size whereas domestic oil production has likely decreased. He reports that over the next ten years, America will transfer $10 trillion to foreign nations. He does not mention that much of will flow to people who are trouble for America, international evils and curses on their own people.

His plan is to develop a diversity of energy sources--wind in the Midwest, solar in the Southwest, drilling offshore, batteries and fuel cells, and encouraging the use of natural gas powered trucks and buses. He relies largely on the private sector with certain government mandates such as for the formation of wind and solar transmission corridors. It requires "no new consumer or corporate taxes or government regulation."

The question for students of American politics is: which candidate will come forward with the most convincing plan to address this issue. The rhetorical task is to convince the unconvinced that there is a problem, and persuade the convinced that your plan is feasible, relatively swift in it's delivery, reasonably sensitive to the environment, cost efficient and government lite. The Pickens Plan is quite convincing to this energy layman.

Power Line ends a post on the recent AP/Yahoo poll on the presidential race with this: "The Presidential race polls as a dead heat. The tie-breaker is the price of gasoline. Of all issues, it is rated highest by respondents, with 66% saying it is 'extremely important.' If John McCain quits paying lip service to the global warming myth and runs as the candidate who wants to expand our access to energy, he will win rather easily in November."

It's the Price of Gas, Stupid!

I just filled up my Honda Odyssey here on Long Island...$71! Gas is not just over $4 a gallon. That was a few weeks ago. At $4.23, it is now well over $4 and heading swiftly toward $5. The candidate who squarely and convincingly addresses this issue will be the next President of the United States. It's as simple as that.

Message to John McCain. Do not just concede that drilling is likely okay now. Call for drilling and make a big point of it.

In fact, call for rapid expansion of our nuclear and oil refinery capacity as well. The last time a license was issued for building a nuclear power plant was 1973. That was 35 years ago. Actually McCain has recently said that he wants 45 new reactors by 2030 to supplement the 104 that currently supply 20% of our national electricity needs (New York Times 6/19/08). In 2005, the Christian Science Monitor reported, "In 1981, the US had 324 refineries with a total capacity of 18.6 million barrels per day, the Department of Energy reports. Today, there are just 132 oil refineries with a capacity of 16.8 million b.p.d., according to Oil and Gas Journal, a trade publication." In real terms, the economy has tripled in size since then.

If John McCain hammers at this issue unrelentingly and with passion ("American Energy Means Prosperity and Security"), and if Obama's high principles and tender conscience (and powerful environmentalist lobby) will not allow him to soften his stern opposition to these measures, the Republicans will win the White House in November.

Charles Krauthammer, "McCain's Oil Epiphany" (Washington Post, June 20, 2008), is puzzled by McCain's half measures on nuclear plants and utterly perplexed over his refusal to support drilling in the 0.01% of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) that contains those billions of barrels of oil.

Paul Krugman thinks drilling, whether off-shore or in ANWR, will have an insignificant impact on oil prices, even in the long run, and that the suggestion that it will is a con. Keep it up, Paul.

Michael Barone suggests that the Democrats have their heads buried deep in the sands of unreality, not only on this issue but also on the war in Iraq ("The Facts in Iraq Are Changing"). Even the Washington Post is telling them to wake up on Iraq. When a candidate, Obama in this case (for ideological reasons, perhaps also for party political reasons), is stuck on a major narrative that is years out of date and the obsolescence of which most voters can see plainly, it is hard to imagine that he could win the election.

Say! Let's Use American Oil!

Gas is over $4 a gallon. It is a marvel that the 100% increase over the last year or so has not shocked the economy into a stupor. Yes, the dollar is weak, but as large portions of the world's population, for example China and India, begin to discover the natural means of prosperity, and thus begin consuming the way we we do, demand is bound to increase. And if the supply of oil does not increase to meet that demand, the natural measn of price regulation will give us ever higher oil prices and thus higher prices for just about everything else. Expect gas to cost $5 or $6 a gallon, maybe more, if we don't do something soon.

But it seems that the United States is potentially swimming in oil. But much of of those oil reserves are under federal lands and national parks or under coastal waters, and so environmental laws make extraction impossible...at least politically. This information comes primarily from Pete Winn of CNS News, "U.S. Policies Put Most U.S. Oil Off-Limits to Drilling" and Lawrence Kudlow's column, "More Oil, Jobs, Better Wages."

Here's what should jolt us into seriously reconsidering our priorities, however (Winn):

"there are 117 billion barrels of oil on lands owned or managed by the U.S. government"


"Adding in what's available on privately held land, the figure rises to 139 billion barrels of oil, according to the government - more than the known oil reserves of Iran, Iraq, Russia, Nigeria or Venezuela, respectively."


"The biggest untapped land-based oil deposit in the United States lies within ANWR, the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (7.7 billion barrels)."


"Much of the oil is off-limits because of the National Environmental Policy Act(NEPA), the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act."

Kudlow tells us (tipping his hat to Mark Perry at Carpe Diem):

"The Bakken fields beneath North Dakota, Montana, and Canada hold an estimated 400 billion barrels of oil. In comparison, Saudi Arabia's biggest field, Gahawar, has an estimated 55 billion barrels, while ANWR has an estimated 10.4 billion barrels."

And American voters are connecting the dots. Lawrence Kudlow tells us that, according to Gallup, over the last year "support for more drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas has increased to 57% from 41%."

This is a national security issue and it is a love of neighbor issue. We make opportunity cost decisions on the environment all the time. It is not an absolute value. We pave over "the environment" for roads and housing. We sacrifice it to mineral extraction and recreation. People have to live. It is time to start using Amrican oil sources instead of paying some of the most evil and dangerous people in the world astronomical prices for theirs.

Appendix:

"The Moral Imperative for Drilling" by Victor Davis Hanson (New York Post). He tries to address liberals on their own terms. "Instead of objecting to the view of a derrick from the California hills above the Santa Barbara coast, shouldn't a liberal estate owner instead console himself that the offshore pumping will help a nearby farm worker or carpenter get to work without going broke?...At best, the transfer of wealth to most oil producers means a Chinese worker working longer for less money while artificial island resorts pop up in the Persian Gulf. At worst, that strapped Chinese is also working harder for another Iranian centrifuge, al Qaeda landmine or Saudi-funded madrassa."

"Drill! Drill! Drill!" by Daniel Henninger (Wall Street Journal). "While other nations use their oil reserves to attain world status, we give ours up. Why shouldn't they conclude that, long term, these people can be taken? Nikita Khrushchev said, "We will bury you." Forget that. We'll do it ourselves."

Red and Green

Today's Wall Street Journal editorializes on the current intellectual malaise of the House, Senate, and would-be Presidents on what we can now legitimately term our "energy crisis" ("Windfall Profits for Dummies," May 3). Here is a succinct list of contradictions these shape-shifting weasels present as policy solutions to the American public:

1. They want lower prices, but don't want more production to increase supply.

2.They want oil "independence," but they've declared off limits most of the big sources of domestic oil that could replace foreign imports.

3. They want Americans to use less oil to reduce greenhouse gases, but they protest higher oil prices that reduce demand.

4. They want more oil company investment, but they want to confiscate the profits from that investment.

Until someone within the government Leviathan itself begins to articulate these obvious incoherences, Pelosi and the Nancy Boys, Chuckie Schumer, and both of the economically illiterate Democrat candidates for President will continue to confuse the public and to demonize the one group that has the wherewithal to solve the issue--the oil and gas industry.

For Democrats, demagoguery on this issue is second nature--actually, demagoguery per se is second nature to Democrats. But these contradictions that the Journal identifies are the surface emanations of the underlying commitments to which the Democratic party continues to cling. The barely concealed Marxism underlying their antipathy to corporations (whose profits are only the expropriation of the surplus value created by the workers) is in league with, but also in tension with, the new green sensibility that now passes for public morality. Thus, we cannot tap our own huge reservoirs of energy because to do so runs into the de facto veto exercised by Green Peace and the Sierra Club--Thou Shalt Not Do Anything That Forwards Modern Capitalist Industrial Society. But even as they vilify capitalists and industrialists, even the Marxists know deep down that that's where the money is, and if the greens ever succeeded in their project to reduce us all to noble Neolithic-era savages, they would have precious little title to the name "Progressive".

This coalition of Red and Green may be an easy fit under the Democratic tent, but the resultant doctrinal inconsistencies extending into our public policy are really beginning to threaten our economy and our world leadership.

Any Republicans out there listening?