The Obama campaign is pushing John McCain's support for off-shore drilling very hard, sending the press corps several emails daily about McCain's flip-flop on the issue. Now Team Obama is highlighting this odd quote from McCain at a town hall meeting in Fresno, California, as reported by MSNBC's First Read: "Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial."
Sure, it would be nice, psychologically, to believe that the U.S. has a homegrown energy supply that would decrease our reliance on foreign oil. But drilling offshore would be environmentally disastrous and yield very little output. Investing in alternative energy and mass transit would have a far greater "psychological impact," don't you think?
--Dana Goldstein
