The McCain campaign’s internal polling must show energy policy at the very top of voters’ priority list, because the senator has talked about little else the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, for McCain, the pitch has been pretty weak.
First, McCain talked up a “gas-tax holiday,” which most voters recognized as cheap, unhelpful pandering. Second, he embraced Bush’s coastal-drilling plan, which his own campaign concedes wouldn’t affect the price of gas. This week, he’s going with an X-Prize-like policy for cars that run on some yet-to-be-invented low-emissions battery.
Today, however, McCain started getting more specific with his ambitious goals. Greg Sargent reports this excerpt from a speech McCain will deliver today in Nevada:
“In recent days I have set before the American people an energy plan.
“And let it begin today with this commitment: In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025….
“Some will say this goal is unattainable within that relatively short span of years — it’s too hard and we need more time. Let me remind them that in the space of half that time — about eight years — this nation conceived and carried out a plan to take three Americans to the Moon and bring them safely home.”
Well, that certainly sounds pleasant, doesn’t it? I have no idea what “strategic independence” means — and McCain didn’t explain it — but the phrase sounds terrific. Who’d be against “strategic independence”?
What’s more, it creates quite an ambitious picture. Greg noted, “[A]ssuming ‘strategic independence’ means ‘independence,’ McCain is promising us stability in the Mideast in five years (2013); and independence from foreign oil in less than two decades.”
I’m all for ambition, but does this make any sense?
Atrios had an item a couple of months ago featuring McCain telling an audience, “My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”
Now, as a political matter, the obvious controversy with the remarks was McCain’s implicit suggestion that we fight wars for oil. He’s not supposed to say that, of course, making this an interesting Michael Kinsley Moment.
But it’s that first part of the quote that’s interesting, too. McCain believes he has a policy to “eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” Coupled with today’s comments, that offers some hints as to what McCain means by “strategic independence” (as in, geo-political “strategy”).
In this reality, though, McCain’s talking nonsense.
[T]here isn’t an energy expert in the world — not one — who thinks we can “eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” It’s a child’s fantasy, but McCain spouts this stuff as if solving our problems really were just that easy. It reminds me of his solution to the fighting in Iraq: “One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.'”
Yep. McCain’s team probably saw a poll showing that Americans care a lot about energy policy, and trust Obama on the issue by a large margin. McCain, scrambling, keeps coming up with new promises and ideas to offer.
I guess we’re not supposed to notice that they don’t make a lot of sense.