With $4-a-gallon Republican gas on the horizon, the GOP is running a little scared, and already it's funny to watch: When Republican senators start talking about biofuel from switch grass and soy, it's time to start asking about the drink minimum. And when the President goes all the way to California to talk about immigration and ends up talking about hydrogen-powered cars and hybrids, you know you got his full attention.
Asked by a 14-year-old girl in Orange County Monday what he thought the country will be like in 10 years, the President passed on the opportunity to talk about his legacy, or how the war on terror will have made us safer, or even about the freedom's-on-the-march dividend that will have accrued by then.
Instead, the oil man from Texas decided to trash oil.
“Here's what America needs to be like,” he said, adjusting the time frame slightly to 20 years. “You need to be driving an automobile with hydrogen as the main source of power, and, at the very least, with a hybrid, a plug-in battery … that will let you get the first 40 miles without using gasoline. In other words, between 10 to 20 years from now, we got to get off Middle Eastern oil.”
Add your own drum roll, because it gets better.
The next day, back in Washington, Bush tied up all the traffic on Connecticut Avenue on his way to and from a speech to the Renewable Fuels Association at a local hotel, during which he predicted that Americans at some future point will “have choices to choose from” when it comes to energy.
“You know, there's no doubt in my mind that one of these days, instead of people driving up to a gas station, they're going to be going up to a fueling station, and they'll be able to have choices to choose from,” the President said. “If you've got a hydrogen, you know, powered car, you'll be able to have that choice. If you want 85 percent -- maybe someday a hundred percent -- ethanol, that'll be an option available, too.”
It would be no fun to have choices you could not chose from: That what it was like for Democrats in the 1980s. But here, in part, is what the President of the United States thinks he owes the American people: “We owe it to the American people to be aggressive in the use of technology, so we can diversify away from the hydrocarbon society,” said the oilman for Texas. You have to love what an election year has done to the man's politics.
Most polls put Bush's job approval under 35 percent, placing him in some pretty exclusive company, presidents whose approval rating dropped into the 20s -- Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. It both cases, Nixon in 1973 and Carter in 1979, it was gas prices that fueled the decline.
According to the Gallup Poll, even before these latest price spikes, Americans were already unhappy with Bush on the whole gas thing: In an early April survey only 29 percent of Americans thought he was doing a good job on energy. The pollsters predicted that “if gas prices become the dominant issue, Bush's overall approval rating could be pulled in the direction of his approval ratings on gas prices and energy.”
Well, they have and it has been.
The ripple effect has begun to sound like and earthquake on Capitol Hill, where Republicans are worried that their prospects in November can turn to ashes if they don't get control of this gas business right now.
Still, despite Bush's evangelizing on the need to give up hydrocarbons, Hill Republicans are proposing $100 rebate plan to ease the burden on consumers that includes the right for oil companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
At a press conference Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was flanked by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, Energy Committee Chair Pete Domenici, and three of the most vulnerable incumbents on the ballot this November -- Montana's Conrad Burns, Jim Talent of Missouri and Pennsylvania's junior senator, Rick Santorum. But be assured that there is no midterm politicking involved in this one.
“The package we're introducing today also takes steps to get at the root of the cause of the rising gas prices: our dangerous dependence on foreign sources of oil,” Frist said, “Our plan would take steps to both reduce demand for oil and increase supply right here at home … And it would increase our domestic supply by opening a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to environmentally sensitive explorations.”
Which gave Democrats, who have their own plan which you'll hear nothing about, a chance to have a little fun: “Let's get this straight," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “The oil companies are making record profits. They're getting billions of dollars of subsidies and royalty holidays from the Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration. The American people are paying a terrible price at the pump. And what do the Republicans suggest? Let's do away with the environmental rules. Let's drill in the ANWR.”
Easy shot, but it's not like that is all they suggested.
“You all remember,” Domenici said, “the country was very pleased to hear the President speak of us being addicted to crude oil, and then saying that we wanted to do something about it.” The GOP proposal, said the New Mexico Republican, is, in part, the President's vision come to life. “It authorizes $1.1 billion for research into new sources of ethanol, such as -- and we all know about this -- switch grass and soy," he said.
Actually, we all don't know about it. But it sure sounds like some people are getting really, really worried.
Terence Samuel is a political writer in Washington, D.C.
