Krauthammer and Gerson: Practically the Same Column

One of the things you miss by not reading the dead-trees edition is the ability to see different pieces side by side. It's a lot harder to do that on a laptop screen. But after shredding Krauthammer yesterday, I turned to Gerson, and couldn't help but notice the parallelism.

Krauthammer: Let's see: housing meltdown, credit crunch, oil shock not seen since the 1970s. The economy is slowing, unemployment growing and inflation increasing. It's the sixth year of a highly unpopular war, and the president's approval rating is at 30 percent. The Italian Communist Party could win this election. The American Democratic Party is trying its best to lose it.

Gerson: There is now one question in American politics: With the Republican Party in such bad shape -- measured by polls, voter registration and general enthusiasm -- why isn't Barack Obama in better shape? (Most national polls show him slightly ahead.)

Krauthammer: However, Americans' greatest concern is the economy, and their greatest economic concern is energy (by a significant margin: 37 percent to 21 percent for inflation). Yet Democrats have gratuitously forfeited the issue of increased drilling for domestic oil and gas. By an overwhelming margin of 2 to 1, Americans want to lift the moratorium preventing drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, thus unlocking vast energy resources shut down for the past 27 years.

Gerson: Sometimes the right issue can be even better than the right theory, and for McCain the energy issue has been a gift. There is perhaps no other topic in American politics today on which the public is angry, seeks action and agrees strongly with Republicans.

Krauthammer: Democrats...say that we cannot drill our way out of the oil crisis. Of course not. But it is equally obvious that we cannot solar or wind or biomass our way out. Does this mean that because any one measure cannot solve a problem, it needs to be rejected?

Gerson: Obama is hamstrung by a coalition that insists we will not drill our way out of this problem -- which is true but beside the point. No single approach will solve the problem in the short or medium term. And a nation in an energy crisis has every justification to extract its oil and natural gas while it pursues alternatives to oil and natural gas.

Krauthammer: Why is this issue either/or? Who's against properly inflated tires? Let's start a national campaign, Cuban-style, with giant venceremos posters lining the highways. ("Inflate your tires. Victory or death!") Why must there be a choice between encouraging conservation and increasing supply? The logical answer is obvious: Do both. Do everything. Wind and solar. A tire gauge in every mailbox. Hell, a team of oxen for every family (to pull their gasoline-drained SUVs).

Gerson: McCain's approach is to do it all: drilling, nuclear, alternatives and conservation.

The first K-G couplet is mere concern trollery. If they want to shed crocodile tears in two-part harmony, far be it from me to interfere.

In the second one, Messrs. K. and G. are - how best to say it? - encouraging the shortsightedness of the electorate, and cheering the politicians that pander to it, if they're Republicans. To sum them up, energy costs are suddenly high today. If the reaction of the American people is to do something that's a bad idea for other reasons, but may reduce the price of gasoline by a dime in 2018, then John McCain's willingness to pander to this desire is all good - and Obama's initial resistance was dumb, and his change of heart shows that he has no principles.

Of course, as I said yesterday, they're viewing this through the wrong lens - of energy, rather than climate change. In terms of climate change, more drilling is a bad idea - but in this case, it's a bad idea on a small scale, so if it can be traded in some manner for things that substantially advance the climate change agenda, then it might well be worth it. If offshore drilling had the capability of bringing back the era of cheap, abundant oil, reversing on this would be caving on a core principle. But its lack of likely impact reduces it to a bargaining chip.

The last two couplets again show K. and G. looking through the wrong lens. Offshore drilling isn't part of the solution; it's part of the problem.

Gerson adds something more that's worth a response:

But since Obama's short public career has been conventionally -- in some cases, extremely -- liberal, his tactical shift to the center has been startlingly obvious, on issues from guns to terror surveillance to Iraq, and now (reluctantly) to oil drilling. Says Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center: "Obama's political calculation may be correct, but it still involves a price. It has shattered his claim to be different. It calls into question his political character and leaves the impression he is consumed and defined by ambition."

At least temporarily, Obama's tactics have raised a damning political question: Who is this man?

Nice, but changing positions on third-tier issues such as gun control, or minor aspects of a major issue like climate change, don't exactly call Obama's identity into question. (Damned if I know what Gerson's referring to about Iraq.) He's got a point with the FISA issue, but that's really all he's got.

But all the way back in February 2007, Obama defined the core issues of this election as Iraq, health care, and climate change. He's also got the meta-issue that lobbyists and the corporations they represent shouldn't be the ones to wield power in our system; real people should. Obama's positions on all of these issues have been quite consistent over time. Changes on minor issues or minor points hardly call Obama's identity or principles into doubt, any more than Reagan stopped being Reagan when he caved on Social Security in 1983.

Some Worthwhile Stuff in the Sunday WaPo

And some stuff to dump on, as always. But there's a time to give credit where credit is due. I'll do a summary here, then say some more as time allows.

Front page: "Hovering Above Poverty, Grasping for Middle Class" is the top headline in the print edition. The WaPo surveyed "1,350 randomly selected people between ages 18 and 64 who work at least 30 hours a week and earned no more than $27,000 last year" which is the bottom 40% of the workforce in terms of income. One quick take:

[T]he vast majority of those surveyed are having trouble paying for gas, saving for retirement or for their children's educations. Most find it difficult to afford health care and housing, and nearly half struggle to pay for food....Three in 10 work for companies that do not offer them health insurance or paid vacations. About 4 in 10 get no sick days or retirement benefits.

To cut expenses, most said they are trying to minimize their use of electricity and heat, and more than half said they have postponed needed medical or dental care.

What the Dems could offer this group: universal health care, two weeks' paid vacation and one week of sick leave per year, and a promise to stand behind Social Security. The Broders of the world are always trying to cut back on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, because It's Important To Be Responsible, unless of course you're figuring out how to pay for a war. Then you can just borrow like crazy, and cut taxes on the rich.

Outlook section:

1) Global Warming Did It! Well, Maybe Not by Joel Achenbach. A surprisingly insightful piece by a guy who usually writes fluff pieces. Some quick points he makes:

a) While global warming is real, there's no way to say a particular weather disaster (e.g. Katrina, this year's Iowa floods) are caused by climate change. All you can say is that global warming ups the odds of floods, severe hurricanes, and the like.

b) We're trashing the environment and putting ourselves at risk in plenty of other ways. If we live in low-lying areas or in arid but wooded areas, drain wetlands, straighten out streams, and the like, then we're asking for trouble - climate change or no.

c) The takeaway: we should definitely worry about global warming. But we're acting crazy in plenty of other ways, too.

2) "McCain's Problem Isn't His Tactics. It's GOP Ideas," by Greg Anrig. Short version: being against taxes, regulations, effective government, and pretty much any Federal program that would actually help ordinary people, has proved to be catastrophic (see Iraq, Katrina, lead on kids' toys from China, salmonella on jalapenos). Since Katrina, everyone's pretty much figured this out. But there's nothing in the conservative tool chest but more of the same, which doesn't give McCain much to work with.

Op-Ed Page:

1) Shorter George Will: Obama's too full of himself, and too 'cosmopolitan' (whatever that means, and it's essentially what they used to call Jews), and besides, he wants to bring about change, which is never good. Issues? What issues? Atmospherics are more important.

2) Shorter David Broder: filibusters, schmilibusters - what the Dems need to break partisan gridlock is centrist Senators who are willing to work with Republicans. Like Mark Warner, Mark Begich, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tom and Mark Udall. Oh, and Ted Stevens' record of steering pork back to Alaska was all about helping the needy back home. (The 'bridge to nowhere' would have put how many meals on struggling families' tables? Not to mention, Alaska has the sixth-highest median family income of any U.S. state. Yeppers, making sure Federal money went to Alaska rather than somewhere else was all about helping the needy.)

3) Heather Lende (guest columnist, Alaska resident): We Alaskans like Ted Stevens. He's our pal, our uncle. And besides, the bribes he took weren't ginormous or anything.

4) David Ignatius takes dictation from a Senior Administration Official: we're not gonna bomb Iran this year - even Cheney is OK with that.

One part that wasn't dictation: "By late 2009, the Israelis warn, the Iranians could produce the 1,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium that could quickly be converted to the 25 kilos of highly enriched fuel needed for a bomb." I'm no expert on nuclear enrichment, but my understanding is that uranium for a nuclear power plant (i.e. low-enriched) needs to be on the order of 5% U-235, but bomb-grade (highly enriched) is more like 95%. The purpose of the centrifuges is to separate the U-235 from the much less fissile U-238. I'd gladly accept clarification from anyone more knowledgable about these things, but it sure would seem like it should take a good bit longer to get from 5% pure to 95% pure than it did to get from yellowcake to 5%.

5) Jim Hoagland has a column about China, the Olympics, and human rights, and I'm sure it's important, but my eyelids always get heavy when reading Hoagland. You're on your own.