From BarackObama.com, "New Energy for America" by Barack Obama
Linked is the text to a "major address" that Obama gave today on energy policy. Just once, I would like a presidential candidate to give a minor address.
The context of the major address in question is full of big errors. First, note the characteristic Obama hyperbole that is becoming the annoying background noise to this campaign cycle:
We meet at a moment when this country is facing a set of challenges greater than any we've seen in generations…That is why this election could be the most important of our lifetime.
Here's news for Obama - they say those things about every election. Even Bill Clinton spoke that way in 1996 when the biggest issue was how we were going get Midnight Basketball programs to sprout across the land.
On substantive matters, Obama spoke with His customary modesty:
Breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face. It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy. This transformation will be costly, and given the fiscal disaster we will inherit from the last Administration, it will likely require us to defer some other priorities.
It is also a transformation that will require more than just a few government programs. Energy independence will require an all-hands-on-deck effort from America - effort from our scientists and entrepreneurs; from businesses and from every American citizen. Factories will have to re-tool and re-design. Businesses will need to find ways to emit less carbon dioxide. All of us will need to buy more of the fuel-efficient cars built by this state, and find new ways to improve efficiency and save energy in our own homes and businesses.
Terrific. The guy who lacks a single day's experience in the private sector is going to transform our entire economy. I feel so much better. I'm sure he has carefully calculated the costs of transforming the economy, and is comfortable with what the costs of such a transformation will do to those living on the economic margins.
One of many things Obama fails to understand is that economies don't get transformed by diktat. George H.W. Bush didn't declare in 1989 that we needed to transform the way we managed information. And if he had, Andy Grove, Bill Gates and Michael Dell would have told him to bug off.
The visionaries don't go into government. The freedom of a market economy allows for the visionaries to innovate and transform. Government can at best give a helping hand on matters that require collective action. But if there's money to be made in wind (which there is), the market will find it. Same thing with solar. Obama's plans for ordering innovation, taxing windfall profits and subsidizing the purchases of hybrids are ridiculous and expensive sideshows.
And then there's Obama's pathetic and confusing straddle on offshore drilling. He derides the benefits that offshore drilling will provide as merely psychological. I know this might be an advanced concept for someone who's never had more than a passing relationship with the free market economy, but the scarcity of oil contributes to its price. If that scarcity or future scarcity promises to be less dire, prices will go down. Think of it this way - if someone discovered several hundred metric tons of gold tomorrow, gold would instantly become worth much less even though it would take a while to shape the newfound gold into watches, jewels and other assorted baubles.
It's interesting that Obama has responded to the political circumstances of the day by giving this major address. He rightly lamented that it took 30 years of government inaction to get to this crisis point, and mentioned that John McCain had been part of the government for 26 of those years, Touché. Still, He avoids mentioning the areas where government has done the most harm, namely its jihad against nuclear power and its various prohibitions on fully exploiting our indigenous resources. Why does He avoid mentioning such things? Because those are policies He'll perpetuate. What's more, Obama has been a senator for almost four years and running for president for almost two years. I don't recall energy being a preoccupation of either Senator Obama or Candidate Obama until this past week.
That's why His basic philosophy matters so much - issues will come up between now and 2012 that few people anticipate. Senator Judgment apparently thinks He can order the economy magically transformed, showing a faith in Hope/Change that borders on the religious.
UPDATE: Blogger Robert Stacy McCain (no relation) points out that Obama used the word "planet" eight times in today's speech. Such are the demands of being a citizen of the world.
