WHAT WE LOST WITH VILSACK: Of course everyone's initial reaction to Tom Vilsack dropping out was to assume that nothing of substance was missing. Just another moderate technocrat to fail, right? But as Brad Plumer pointed out yesterday, Vilsack did have one thing going for him, "hands down, the most ambitious energy and climate-change plan of any candidate in the field thus far." Now granted, Jason Zengerle portrayed this policy in his delightful profile of Vilsack as motivated at least partly by his affection for corn-based alternative fuels like ethanol that are popular in Iowa. But I agree with Brad that if Vilsack had been elected on a platform of proposing a 75 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gases by 2050 he'd have a real mandate for aggressively addressing climate change. There's no question that radical action is needed on this issue, and, if you look at most major initiatives in American history they could not have happened without leadership from the president--think New Deal era programs like Social Security, or the 1960'S Civil Rights legislation. But there has never been a president who took on the environment the way FDR took on poverty and LBJ took on civil rights. Even if Vilsack had lost the primary, his presence could have pushed the other candidates to embrace a more aggressive anti-global warming platform, like the way Kerry and Edwards became more critical of the Iraq War to head off Howard Dean's challenge. Unless Al Gore gets in, I'm afraid no one will be the environmental candidate in '08.
--Ben Adler
