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Winds of Change
Submitted by jgehring on Wed, 08/20/2008 - 10:34am.
Story summary:
Some of the political ads on TV this summer have managed to sink to the level of the swift-boat attacks that torpedoed John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004. One, authorized by the McCain campaign, depicted a grinning Barack Obama next to a gas pump as the price-per-gallon meter shot toward $5. The ad implied that the lone culprit for high gas prices (which averaged $1.20 a gallon in spring 2002 but hung around $4.10 for much of this summer) is the junior senator from Illinois. That’s because he did not initially jump to lift the ban restricting off-shore oil drilling, or support the Arizona senator’s feckless call for a federal gas-tax moratorium. That proposal was a gimmick and eventually disappeared even from McCain’s play book.
Winds of Change
Commonweal
8-20-08
In terms of U.S. election cycles, that future is now. Even if the danger of global warming is overstated, moving away from fossil fuels is clearly the prudent thing to do. The question is whether the public-and the media-will settle for a campaign focused on defamatory political advertisements, or will insist the candidates address real issues with concrete solutions. A new energy policy must first aim at conservation and efficiency. Since fossil fuels are the prime culprit in our environmental meltdown, their use must be curtailed.