The Wrong Birthday Present for Obama
In one of the sillier and least productive political stunts in this season of props, hi-jinks and distractions, ABC’s Rick Klein notes that the GOP will be handing out tire gauges to members of the press during Barack Obama’s visit to Michigan. For serious proponents of energy solutions, the humor of this may rightly escape you.
Look for a tire gauge at a political event (or cable outlet) near you on Monday. Obama’s comment last week, about how proper tire inflation could save more gas than drilling could produce, is making for some fun prop work.
Michigan Republicans will be passing out tire gauges at Obama’s event in Michigan. And the RNC is distributing tire gauges to reporters on Monday — engraved “Obama’s Energy Plan,” a party official tell The Note.
This is intended as a “birthday present” to Obama, as he turns 47 on the road today. By this point, all of us who follow the news know of Obama’s comments about how Americans could eliminate the need for additional domestic oil production “by just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups.”
On the one hand, it was a foolish way to frame his message. We have discussed energy policy here at great length, and if anything is clear it is the fact that a final solution to our energy woes will encompass a full range of efforts – new, renewable forms of alternative energy being developed alongside robust enhancements to our own domestic production capabilities. But one aspect of the solution which too often receives short shrift is conservation – a sin of which I am also guilty on far too many occasions.
As I have mentioned repeatedly, George Will made one of his most trenchant observations on American society recently when he noted that we, as a nation, have a remarkably low threshold for pain and nearly zero tolerance for the concept of sacrifice. However, we are in the middle of an energy crisis. We refer to it as such constantly and it has become one of the pivotal issues of the election. And yet the idea of asking Americans to make sacrifices in an effort to drastically reduce our energy consumption is roughly as popular on the campaign trail as the proverbial turd in the punchbowl.
In past, darker times, Americans grew victory gardens, did without meat in their meals, melted down pots and pans for the war effort and tolerated fuel rationing. They were not regulated or legislated into such action – they were inspired and led to it by their governmental leaders who showed them the value of sacrifice in the face of a national crisis. Yet today, with a new crisis looming, when a candidate for office so much as suggests that we could consume a bit less energy by the simple act of monitoring our tire pressure (an action hardly amounting to any real “sacrifice”) he is not only ignored, but made a subject of derision for broaching the subject.
If you want to attack Obama on a personal level about energy, talk to him about his new campaign plane. Both he and McCain could surely set an example by using less grandiose and more fuel efficient transportation. Leading by example and displaying the courage to call upon Americans to make serious reductions in energy consumption would go much further in impressing us than snide rim-shots and hectoring anyone who talks about cutting usage. These shameless, schoolyard bullying tactics send exactly the wrong message while ignoring one (admittedly small) element of the real solutions to our national energy crisis. The Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for this sort of destructive political sideshow.
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9 Responses to “The Wrong Birthday Present for Obama”
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Well, at least it's less insulting than purple Band Aids. Oh, and note that in the last three paragraphs in that enlightening plane story, McCain's plane is described, oddly with much less snark, as very similar if “slightly smaller.” Josh Marshall has a little fun with it as well, pointing to an old article describing Sen. Kerry's plane similarly, as well as Bush's campaign plane in '00. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/…. On the larger point, a single campaign plane is probably no less fuel efficient than the campaigns using multiple buses and individual vehicles to travel nationwide 24/7, and are a requirement anyway these days. It's a big country!
Can I just say that people's response to this is starting to piss me off. This is the umpteenth blog post I've read this morning suggesting that the whole “tire guage” stunt is silly and just proves McCain has no serious proposals for handling our energy problems. That is correct. But it misses the bigger point: The stunt is not meant to be a serious criticism of Obama's energy plan. It is meant to plant the idea in the low-information voter's mind that it is Obama that isn't taking our energy problems seriously. The purpose of this stunt is to paint Obama as being naive about how to deal with our problems.
It does not matter if the joke is a joke. It does not matter if “keep your tires inflated” is not the whole of Obama's energy plan. It does not matter if McCain has no serious counter-proposal. All that matters is fooling voters into thinking that Obama isn't serious. That is all McCain has to do.
And just treating this stunt as nothing more than a stunt is playing right into the game.
They are mocking Obama. Obama needs to mock them back. He needs to hold up one of these tire gauges as PROOF that McCain has no serious proposal for solving our energy problems. That McCain would rather waste the voters time making jokes.
We need to mock them back. We need to hammer them on this.
Obama (and everyone else who gets the chance) should accept the tire gauge gift — and use it. It really can make a difference. Obviously, it's not the only thing, but it actually could make as much or more difference than domestic drilling might. And it's not only Obama that's saying so, it's Bush's own DOE and EPA. And if that's not good enough, listen to NASCAR.
Of course, keeping your tires properly inflated and your car properly tuned doesn't obviate domestic drilling. They are not either/or choices. But to ridicule the former while championing the latter is just silly. And it's especially silly if you want to make a difference in how much you pay to drive RIGHT NOW.
Perhaps in response to the tire gauge gimmick Obama should pass out savings bonds with a face value of 2 cents, payable in 15 years, because according the the EIA, that's about how much opening up all of the OCS will impact gasoline prices per gallon sometime in the 2020s.
Barak Obama laughs and makes fun when someone says something negative about him. He turns it around and makes it seem as if the attacker is wrong.
McCain and his staff are doing the same thing to Obama and they don't like it. When Obama says something they turn it into a joke. This is infuriating Obama's base and yet it is precisely what they have been doing to their opponents for years now.
Its brilliant. Not going to get much done in government but its brilliant.
I would talk more about the energy problem but whats the use. Ill say drill. The rest of the gang will show up and say it wont work. We will argue about it today. Then a day or two later someone will post on energy. Ill say drill, they will say no, we will rehash the same arguments and then wait for the next post.
The real issue is that Obama is appealing to his Dem core, the children who view Washington as their parent and who wait for Washington to tell them what to do. While liars say that McCain is another Bush, Obama plainly is aping Carter with this stupid conservation-minded piece of — trivia when it comes to energy policiy and the relationship of the federal government to fully grown men and women (even if in so many Dem voter cases, this process is retarded).
You have to realize, Neocon, that PC and reverse racism and the hypocrisy of the Left are at stake here, which extends beyond mere Obama-worship. It's criminal to criticize or dispute or worst of all, annihilate whatever “argument” Obama or his supporters may make or what stunt they pull that is obviously wrong or ridiculous. Elrod has been wrong about Obama being another Reagan in the 1980 elections (there is no widespread rejection of conservatism this year the way there was in 1980 — it's Bush and the current GOP, which is something else — and Obama has been hyped and worshipped, not undercut and slandered, by the media) but there is something that we saw as a reaction by the losing side in 1980, same as in 1984 and in 2000 after Bush won and the Dems failed in their scummy effort to steal what they lost. There is resentment at being rejected. They're OUTRAGED! [tm] that anyone dares question the Gospel of Government (“everything was splendid throughout the 1960s and 1970s and the older Northeast and Midwest remained the model for the USA and the world until that bastard REAGAN ruined this country”) and they're OUTRAGED! [tm[] that anyone dare not fall on his or her feet and worship St. Obama.
Reality is different. Even if the media want to distort things in their Obama campaign.
Obama can get away with style over substance as far as getting elected, but what then? That's what I'm awaiting. I'm honestly intrigued. How much Establishment, how much new ideas and innovation, how much retrogression to Sixties radicalism.
What's next, attacks on credit card companies as well as mortgageurs, price controls in the form of interest rate limits, or even a “debt jamboree” or partial declared write-off?