Obama on energy - bad policy, bad politics

Obama gets a "D" (for Dumb) from me on his energy policy.

In his state of the union he talked about a clean energy future and mentioned - nuclear, coal, oil, and bio fuels and left out solar and wind from his speech. Interestingly he included the ones that are the most easily controlled by corporations.

But that was just a speech. Since then he announced new federal loan guarantees to encourage the building of the first new nuclear power plants in decades. This is stupid in my mind - dangerous, expensive, and wasteful. If we poured an equal amount of money into making solar and wind viable.

But then what really got me was his recent announcement that he is lifting the moratorium on offshore oil drilling. He made the argument against himself when he made the announcement. We use 25% of the world's oil yet we own only 2%. Our domestic supply is a drop in the bucket and I would argue against burning it up now. Petroleum has other uses - try and find something not made from the stuff - besides burning it for energy. That is one reason I believe it is bad policy.

But I know that someday we will drill our oil that is offshore so that is not what surprised me most about Obama's announcement. Besides bad policy it is horrible politics.

"Drill Baby Drill" is the rally cry of conservatives. By now it must be obvious that the conservatives want nothing more than for Obama to fail at everything he does. This, they see is their path back into power.

They criticize everything he does and regularly make up lies about his agenda. Remember the "death panels" or more recently the claims the health care bill was a government takeover. Even when Obama has done or said the exact same thing as previous Republican presidents such as Reagan and Bush Sr. the conservatives have attacked him for these very statements. (example his recent nuclear policy statement - Palin said no president would ever say that, however Reagan and Bush both did).

When Obama announced lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling he was lambasted by Conservatives as not going far enough, too little too late, etc. Obama needs to learn he will not win praise from the right.

So if you are going to allow drilling why not save it as a bargaining chip towards a climate and energy bill! Offer up a bill that will reduce carbon emissions, invest in renewable energy and then to get republican support tell them, after hard negotiation, that they will throw in offshore oil drilling. This also provides cover for conservatives who vote for an energy bill for they can say they negotiated to get the bill to include offshore oil drilling.

So far the Dems and this administration have proved poor at the politics of negotiation with conservatives. They don't seem to understand that they need to start the process asking for more than they think they can get so once things are negotiated they end up getting something closer to what they want.

you get my drift, I'm off like mosquito repellent