Posted by Jed Lewison on Tue Jul 29, 2008 at 4:32 PM Pacific
Reframing the debate over the price of oil
Rasmussen is out with an interesting poll showing that a slight plurality of Americans think its more important to crackdown on speculators than it is to expand offshore drilling.
Obviously, this is something of a false dichotomy, but this is also politics, and I think the poll suggests that Obama can push his anti-speculators argument in contrast to McCain's offshore drilling argument.
McCain will say that he favors the crackdown as well, but Obama can respond by saying (a) McCain supported the legislation that created the speculator loophole and (b) until recently, his top economic adviser was the guy who wrote it into law (that would be Phil Gramm, of course).
Substantively, I'm skeptical that either policy will do much to change oil prices, but at least the speculator angle has a chance of doing something, whereas expanding offshore drilling without also enacting a comprehensive plan won't do a single thing.
It also neatly dovetails with the notion that John McCain's flip-flop on offshore drilling had more to do with his fundraising plans than good policy, a case ably made in this new MoveOn.org video:
Of course the most important point there is no way that simply expanding offshore drilling will lower prices or make us energy independent, and any plan that expands drilling without taking a comprehensive look at the energy crisis is will just dig us in deeper.
© Jed Lewison