You first, Mr. President

September 27, 2005

The White House tried a new pitch yesterday in addressing gas conservation: wear a sweater drive less.

With fears mounting that high energy costs will crimp economic growth, President Bush called on Americans yesterday to conserve gasoline by driving less. He also issued a directive for all federal agencies to cut their own energy use and to encourage employees to use public transportation.

“We can all pitch in,” Mr. Bush said. “People just need to recognize that the storms have caused disruption,” he added, and that if Americans are able to avoid going “on a trip that’s not essential, that would be helpful.”

On its face, it’s an approach that seems to have merit. For a president who is loath to calling on Americans to sacrifice much of anything, it’s relatively encouraging to see Bush suggest drivers conserve when they can.

There are, however, a few nagging concerns about Bush’s pitch. As Matt Yglesias noted, calling on individual conservation is kind of a joke when it comes to actually making a difference. Gas taxes and CAFE standards are the kind of measures that have an impact. On a similar note, Kevin Drum explained Bush “is unwilling to propose any serious government action to reduce oil use.” With this in mind, asking all of us to “pitch in” is more about public relations and less about a coherent energy policy.

But I want to take a look at this from a slightly different perspective. The president wants Americans to avoid going on trips that are “not essential.” OK, Mr. President, you first.

As we’ve seen repeatedly in recent weeks, Bush doesn’t mind non-essential travel at all. Just this past weekend, Bush took a little tour of several states in order to show Americans that he was personally overseeing the federal government’s preparations with regard to hurricane relief. (In one instance, the White House had to cancel an event because it was too sunny — and the Bush gang didn’t want there to be pictures of the president dealing with an approaching storm while in bright sunshine.)

In fact, Bush has been flying all over the place, apparently for the sole purpose of photo-ops intended to boost his sagging polling ratings.

Every time the president boards Air Force One, it costs taxpayers about $55,000 an hour. It also, of course, uses an untold amount of fuel.

Which leads us back to yesterday. Bush wants us to avoid non-essential travel while he gallivants across the country for unnecessary stagecraft? In fact, at yesterday’s White House press briefing, reporters asked if the president is willing to follow his own advice, either by curtailing his own travel, conserving energy use by the White House staff, or even using fewer cars in the presidential motorcade. Scott McClellan didn’t know of any specific steps Bush was prepared to make.

Figures. Bush has never been big on leading by example.

But if people drive less it means they won’t be going shopping as much.

Bush is being inextricably squeezed between the Scylla of necessities and the Charybdis of expectations.

  • The Crony is a Wastral. For him, I think flying around in AF1 is THE PERK. It is the coolest toy anyone gets with a new job.

    The Boeing 747 uses approx 1 gal of fuel per second, 3600 gal per hour.

    Maybe when The Crony leaves office, his grateful cronies will buy him his own B-747, and keep it stocked, staffed and fueled. By god, for all the Taxpayer Treasure and Corporate Welfare he’s dumped on them, it’s the least they can do. (Cheney too!)

  • The shrub should sit down and have someone add up for him how much he spent on Air Force 1 going around the country on his 60 day tour ,which turned into more than 60 days ,trying to sell his social security plan.I think it costs somewhere around $6000.00 an hour to fly AF1. The president should lead by example,and this was a bad example.

  • You know, the Bush administration never did release any information to the public about that infamous energy policy meeting back in 2001. They wouldn’t even release the names of the attendees. And I believe that this was taken to court under the Freedom of Information Act, but was thrown out by the court for some reason that I do not recall.

    Yet, here we are four-plus years later with one of the most unstable and inflationary periods of energy dysfunction in this nation’s history. And, lo and behold, the energy companies are reaping record profits off of the backs of the American public.

    Hmmmm. I wonder what went on in those energy policy meetings way back when. And I also wonder why the Bush administration is so adament about not releasing any information at all about those meetings.

    Maybe it’s just me, but I’d be willing to bet dollars to donuts that, if the details of those meetings were lain bare to public scrutiny, we might just unveil a scandal the likes of which hasn’t been seen in quite some time. Some might even call it a smoking gun.

    Any enterprising young sleuths out there willing to take this on? A latter day Woodward or Bernstein, perhaps? I hope so.

  • “Bush has never been big on leading by example.”

    True, but that could change. If Shruby took up knitting and showed the country a nicely knitted afghan that he had made himself, why the whole country might learn to knit afghan’s to keep themselves warm this winter. We might just knit ourselves right out of this energy crisis.

    Knitting is hard work but we could do it. With Shruby’s leadership.

    Stop driving! Start knitting!

    That’s the ticket.

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