Power Politics

Dems, Drillers Face Off on Energy Future at DNC

By Richard Martin, 8-26-08

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Shouting to make themselves heard over a clutch of leather-lunged McCain supporters at the Democratic Convention in Denver today, a group of House Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of CALIF, presented the case for a right-angle turn in direction for America’s energy policy.

“The two oilmen in the White House for too long have pursued policies that have served Big Oil,” declared Pelosi, “and not the needs of American consumers and taxpayers.”

The press event was held in front of Denver’s historic Union Station, next to a new hybrid-fuel RTD bus that will shortly go in service in the city’s public transportation fleet. Along with a crowd of a couple of hundred convention-goers, in attendance were a dozen or so vocal Republicans chanting “Drill here! Drill now!”

(In contrast to the multi-ethnic Democratic audience, the McCain supporters, it must be said, were uniformly young and white. Wearing below-the-knee madras shorts, several looked as if they’d just come off the golf course at the Dan Quayle County Club.)

“I thank the McCain people here today,” remarked Pelosi at one point, when the shouting had died down, “for making clear the distinctions between us and them.”

The Democrat representatives are pushing a “comprehensive energy strategy” crafted to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, help slow global climate change, promote a strong renewable-energy economy, and cut fuel prices. Pelosi quoted former Republican president Richard Nixon, who in the early 1970s pledged to make it a “national goal” by the end of that decade to make sure that “the United States is not dependent on any other country for the energy it needs.”

That didn’t happen then, and it’s a distant goal now. Energy experts like Robert Bryce, the editor of Energy Tribune and the author of the new book Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence, point out that America is inextricably woven into the global energy economy, and no amount of rhetoric or legislation, from either party, will change that.

And since it retook power in 2006, the Democratic congressional leadership has not exactly pioneered innovative and courageous legislation on energy. The energy bill of 2007, which took more than a year to pass, is a triumph of legislative expediency, including big subisidies for dubious corn-based ethanol programs.

Nevertheless, as Majority Leader Steny Hoyer pointed out, this House has succeeded in passing the first increase in vehicle emissions standards in 32 years. Dismissing the oil-production proponents attempting to shout him down, Hoyer proclaimed, “Sophomoric chanting will not make us energy independent!”

The Democrats also deplored the “culture of cronyism” in the Bush Administration that has led to abuses like the Dept. of Interior’s “royalty-in-kind” program, under which energy producers repay the U.S. Treasury in oil rather than cash for mineral leases on public lands. That program was examined in a Denver Post investigative report on Sunday Aug. 24, the day before the convention opened, that said the Interior Dept.’s Inspector General is launching an investigation into possible abuses of the system.

Falling into traditional Democratic rhetoric to match the cries of “Drill now,” Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia said that “Big Oil has been pulling the wool over Americans’ eyes for far too long.”

Rahall’s next comment, though, was inarguable: “It’s time for the Democrats and Congress to step up to the plate and pass energy legislation that is truly responsible” and, finally, create an energy policy “that is accountable to the American people.”

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