Column here. (Joan needs to read Paul Krugman's "Driller Instinct" column, below.)
I don't understand John McCain's presidential campaign. I know I'm not his target demographic. But at a time when most people believe he should be distancing himself from the least popular president in modern history, he finds a way to draw closer to George Bush. This week it was his bewildering flip-flop on offshore oil-drilling.
My first job out of college was at a Santa Barbara paper in the early 1980s, where politics was still dominated by a coalition of Democrats and enlightened Republicans horrified by the nightmare of the 1969 oil spill off the coast more than a decade earlier. I came of age believing environmentalism was a bipartisan concern.
That's become harder to believe, of course, but McCain was one of the comparative good guys. On Monday night Al Gore praised him as a rare GOP supporter on climate change issues, while endorsing Barack Obama. Now McCain has sold his soul for the alleged 18 billion barrels of oil we'd have access to if every single inch of coastal oil resources were plundered. That's roughly two years' worth of American oil consumption, and we probably wouldn't have access to most of it during McCain's (increasingly unlikely) presidency. So I don't understand what he's doing, but it's not the first time. (Other flip-flops I don't get: embracing the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy, saying he now wouldn't vote for his own immigration reform bill, and sucking up to former "agents of intolerance" on the Christian right. In case anyone in the McCain camp cares.) My weekly Current video explores the topic in more depth . . . .
But while I'm talking about disappointing political moves by a presidential candidate, I'd be remiss if I ignored Barack Obama's decision to support the tragic House FISA compromise. Obama's promise to work to strike telecom immunity isn't much comfort, as Glenn Greenwald explains here; those forces won't have the votes to strip that language from the bill. The only hope (a forlorn one, I admit) was blocking it. Call me politically unsophisticated, but I was actually surprised by Obama's decision. We'll have more on the issue in the days to come.
1 comment:
Whoever is the next President will have some serious problems when it comes to addressing global problems, whether it is climate change or others. Anything that business sees against its interest will prompt them to pressure for no action or weak action, arguing that investment and jobs could move overseas. They may well might if there isn´t coordinated action by countries. On climate change that could be something like the ´Contraction and Convergence´ proposal being discussed for inclusion as part of the Simultaneous Policy. That is a package of measures being developed by people around the world and is a way for US citizens to reclaim their sovereignty from powerful vested interests. If you are unfamiliar with it, take a look at:
http://globaljusticeideas.blogspot.com/2008/06/us-presidential-election.html
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