Bird’s-Eye View

Barack Obama’s wrapping up the world tour. Astounding crowd in Germany and the speech was on target, but now, get home and start battling John McCain on your weakest front: energy policy. Unfortunately, no matter how false or misleading they get, the Republicans appear to have the American public convinced in an over-simplistic formula: More domestic drilling means lower gas prices. While for the most part such thinking is drastically flawed - even the Bush Administration’s own Energy Information Administration recently said any new domestic drilling will have small, almost insignificant benefits by 2030 (read that date again) - the sales pitch is working.

Obama’s got a penchant for being longwinded, but he needs to make the message simple. He needs to clearly and simply articulate his answer to this question: What does Washington do about high gasoline prices? Don’t talk about “hope” or offer up any other kind of soaring rhetoric. That works great during nomination speeches and in front of huge Berlin crowds, but Joe and Jane Blue Collar in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere want to know how Washington’s gonna save them some dough at the pump. Launch the retort to McCain and the GOP in an easy-to-understand way so the media doesn’t fumble the explanation.

I’ll give you an example. The day I knew Republican Lynn Swann wouldn’t defeat incumbent Ed Rendell for the governor’s seat in 2006 was the same day Swann released his property tax elimination plan. Swann wanted to impose a complicated plan that included a constitutional amendment, a plan that would take newspaper writers 8 inches of column space to explain almost any time they had to write about it for the duration of the election. Rendell, on the other hand, had very simple-to-understand proposals like: “Expanded gambling like slot machines means lower property taxes.” Your average voter gets that quickly. The more complicated the explanation, the harder it is for the electorate to “get it,” the more likely voters get turned off. 

It’s hard, no doubt, when it comes to the oil market to propose ways to bring down the price of gasoline. Obama, though, has to find a way to explain it because if Obama loses this election it may very well be because voters see the GOP as better about energy policy than the Democrats. And in voter minds, high energy prices are directly link to the state of the economy, the number one issue in this election.

Obama’s plan includes taxing skyrocketing oil company profits and investing huge amounts of money in alternative energy development and encouraging greater production of plug-in hybrids. He talks about cap-and-trade systems to reduce carbon emissions. Creating a “Clean Technologies Deployment Venture Capital Fund.” Encouraging farmers to grow more trees and grasslands. Increasing fuel economy standards.

The current McCain/Bush/Congressional Republican Plan voters are hearing about right now: Domestic oil drilling = lower gasoline prices.

Which plan do you think is easier to sell?