Fossilized thinking
“Nancy Pelosi recently diluted her opposition to offshore drilling, but we’re beginning to wonder if the House speaker even knows why she opposed increasing domestic energy supplies in the first place,” the Wall Street Journal said Tuesday in an editorial.
“Ms. Pelosi appeared Sunday on NBC’s ’Meet the Press,’ where Tom Brokaw gently pointed out that the various Democratic alternative energy ambitions are ’not going to happen overnight.’ Replied Ms. Pelosi: ’You can have a transition with natural gas. That, that is cheap, abundant and clean compared to fossil fuels.’ Later, she again said that ’I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels,’ and that wind, solar, biofuels and ’a focus on natural gas, these are the real alternatives.’
“Apparently Ms. Pelosi’s new script is still being reworked, but it’s a telling mistake. Not only is natural gas every bit as much a ’fossil fuel’ as oil or coal, more to the point, these concentrated organic compounds found beneath the earth’s surface must be extracted by … drilling. And sometimes even drilling offshore, on the Outer Continental Shelf. But more drilling is what Ms. Pelosi had refused to allow just a few days ago.
“Natural gas was once the toast of the Beltway, since it burns cleaner than oil and coal, though that was before Democrats became hostile to any form of carbon energy. But lately natural gas is making a comeback, thanks in part to the high-profile advocacy of T. Boone Pickens, who has been embraced by Democrats as the latest green champion. As a follow-up, we’d like to see someone ask Ms. Pelosi if she still supports more natural gas exploration once she learns that it’s made from evil carbon.”
The new Michelle
“Near the end of Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention Monday night, I got an e-mail from a friend who had been with me at another speech by Mrs. Obama, in Charlotte, N.C., last May, on the eve of that state’s primary,” Byron York writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
“’This isn’t the Michelle we know,’ my friend said. And indeed, Mrs. Obama’s speech to the delegates here in Denver was worlds away from her address in Charlotte,” Mr. York said.
“In Denver, Michelle Obama described America as a place of hope, a place where people find success during the course of ’improbable journeys.’ In Charlotte, her America was a dark and ugly place, where people who work hard are knocked down by sinister forces a place where even young children burst into tears when they realize the deck is stacked against them.
“In Denver, Mrs. Obama said, ’My piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me.’ Those forebears, she explained, were ’driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work the same conviction that drives the men and women I’ve met all across this country. … That’s why I love this country.”
“In Charlotte, Mrs. Obama said, ’We’re still living in a time and in a nation where the bar is set, right? • You start working hard and sacrificing and you think you’re getting close to that bar, you’re working and you’re struggling, and then what happens? They raise the bar • keep it just out of reach.’”
Just like us
“Pssst. Did you hear? Barack Obama is normal. Why, he’s just like you and me,” New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin writes.
“He loves his glamorous wife. His kids are peachy-cute adorable. What an all-American family they are!” Mr. Goodwin exclaimed.
“Sure, he may look and sound different and has, even Michelle Obama said, ’a funny name,’ and was born in the exotic confines of Hawaii. But underneath it all, he’s sooooo normal and sooooo American in his values.
“Get it? You’d have to be dead not to.
“Welcome to the ’Repair Barack Obama’s Image’ convention. That so much repair work is needed speaks to the campaign’s concern about the sagging poll numbers and the fear that Obama, for all his soaring success, still has not connected with the working-class voters who will decide the election. Images of Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American rants have to be eliminated from the collective memory bank if Obama is to win.
“It’s a real problem, and Team Obama is wise to confront it, even if the parade of ordinary people making mundane points [Monday] was a little, well, underwhelming.
“And even if Obama’s own late-night video appearance, dripping with better-kept-in-private family talk, was just a tad creepy. There was an element of pleading for acceptance that was almost sad.
“Still, there was no missing the political point behind the made-for-TV show. Not after speaker after speaker filled in minor pieces of the portrait of a good old-fashioned, red-blooded American who shares your values, values, values.”
A horrible truth
“A dark cloud of anxiety” hovers over the Democratic Party convention, Gideon Rachman writes in the Financial Times.
“A horrible truth is beginning to dawn on the Democrats. Barack Obama is not the ’once in a generation’ political genius they thought they had discovered. On the contrary, he is a weak candidate for the presidency,” Mr. Rachman said.
“With a feeble economy, an unpopular war and the Republicans in disarray, the Democrats should win the presidential election in a canter. But Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, is neck and neck with John McCain, his Republican rival. For sure, Mr. Obama has some real assets — intelligence, grace, good looks, star quality. But history suggests that he is a very risky candidate.
“Since 1968, the Democrats have won just three out of 10 presidential races. Their two successful candidates — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — were both white, centrist governors from the southern U.S. Whenever the Democrats nominated a liberal from outside the South — George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry — they lost.
“Mr. Obama is a northerner. He is a liberal. He is a former college professor. And he is black. A bold choice, under the circumstances.”
• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.
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