Imagine for a minute that attending the
Republican convention in St. Paul, sitting in a skybox overlooking the
convention floor, were observers from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. And
imagine for a minute what these observers would have been doing when
Rudy Giuliani led the delegates in a chant of “drill, baby, drill!”
I’ll tell you what they
would have been doing: the Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan observers
would have been up out of their seats, exchanging high-fives and
joining in the chant louder than anyone in the hall — “Yes! Yes! Drill,
America, drill!” — because an America that is focused first and
foremost on drilling for oil is an America more focused on feeding its
oil habit than kicking it.
Why would Republicans, the party of
business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a
19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a
21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it
reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the
eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make
more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. “Typewriters, baby,
typewriters.”
Of course, we’re going to need oil for many
years, but instead of exalting that — with “drill, baby, drill” — why
not throw all our energy into innovating a whole new industry of clean
power with the mantra “invent, baby, invent?” That is what a party
committed to “change” would really be doing. As they say in Texas: “If
all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is
all you ever got.”
I dwell on this issue because it is symbolic
of the campaign that John McCain has decided to run. It’s a campaign
now built on turning everything possible into a cultural wedge issue —
including even energy policy, no matter how stupid it makes the voters
and no matter how much it might weaken America.
I respected
McCain’s willingness to support the troop surge in Iraq, even if it was
going to cost him the Republican nomination. Now the same guy, who
would not sell his soul to win his party’s nomination, is ready to sell
every piece of his soul to win the presidency.
In order to
disguise the fact that the core of his campaign is to continue the same
Bush policies that have led 80 percent of the country to conclude we’re
on the wrong track, McCain has decided to play the culture-war card.
Obama may be a bit professorial, but at least he is trying to unite the
country to face the real issues rather than divide us over cultural
differences.
A Washington Post editorial on Thursday put it well:
“On a day when the Congressional Budget Office warned of looming
deficits and a grim economic outlook, when the stock market faltered
even in the wake of the government’s rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac, when President Bush discussed the road ahead in Iraq and
Afghanistan, on what did the campaign of Senator John McCain spend its
energy? A conference call to denounce Senator Barack Obama for using
the phrase ‘lipstick on a pig’ and a new television ad accusing the
Democrat of wanting to teach kindergartners about sex before they learn
to read.”
Some McCain supporters criticize Obama for not having
the steel in his belly to use force in the dangerous world we live in
today. Well I know this: In order to use force, you have to have force.
In order to exercise leverage, you have to have leverage.
I don’t
know how much steel is in Obama’s belly, but I do know that the issues
he is focusing on in this campaign — improving education and health
care, dealing with the deficit and forging a real energy policy based
on building a whole new energy infrastructure — are the only way we can
put steel back into America’s spine. McCain, alas, has abandoned those
issues for the culture-war strategy.
Who cares how much steel
John McCain has in his gut when the steel that today holds up our
bridges, railroads, nuclear reactors and other infrastructure is
rusting? McCain talks about how he would build dozens of nuclear power
plants. Oh, really? They go for $10 billion a pop. Where is the money
going to come from? From lowering taxes? From banning abortions? From
borrowing more from China? From having Sarah Palin “reform” Washington
— as if she has any more clue how to do that than the first 100 names
in the D.C. phonebook?
Sorry, but there is no sustainable
political/military power without economic power, and talking about one
without the other is nonsense. Unless we make America the country most
able to innovate, compete and win in the age of globalization, our
leverage in the world will continue to slowly erode. Those are the
issues this election needs to be about, because that is what the next
four years need to be about.
There is no strong leader without
a strong country. And posing as one, to use the current vernacular, is
nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.