As much as I despise his horrible track record of poor leadership and dishonesty, I think we should try to connect with President Bush. He has a rare window of opportunity:
1) Essentially three years left to his term, and he knows he can’t be re-elected.
2) The public already disapproves of his administration.
3) He has both houses of congress and the supreme court in his pocket.
4) The rhetoric he used, while probably all lies, was essentially an accurate list of exactly what we should be focusing on as far as foreign policy (get off oil, get more from wind/solar/water, reduce consumption, and yes – even get some energy from nuclear power).
It’s time for him to actually show that he can lead (we’ve been waiting for 5 years for this allegedly great leader to emerge). He has nothing to lose!
Imagine if he were to push congres hard for legislation that taxed the hell out of gasoline and all fossil fuels, and used that money to subsidize ethanol, solar, wind, water power. It would piss people off in the short term, but be exactly what we really need in the long term.
Imagine if he were to try to motivate his whack-o base by stressing the emergency of oil-shortages to get us all to really work to build an oil free infrastructure for public stransportation. We have only a few decades of oil left with which we must bootstrap ourselves out of our dependence on oil.
No President who wants to be re-elected can try any of that – because taxing gas and re-committing to some nuclear power would be political suicide… but Bush can’t be re-elected, he’s already on his second term. No president who has to fight really hard to get votes in the house and senate on a law can do this, but Bush already has both houses lined up with him.
President Bush is uniquely positioned to actually do something about energy policy, and he is the only one who could possibly tackle some of the really hard to do political suicide moves that need to be done! He has nothing to lose, and he could gain long term historical respect if he does it…
So how to we reach out and shake him into action? How do we watchdog him if he starts, so that special interests and corporate greed don’t pervert some of this into more line the pockets of the wealty laws, yet keep momentum for actually getting an energy policy that is 30 years overdue?
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