Bush's New Energy Policy--Drilling for Votes

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Bush's New Energy Policy--Drilling for Votes
by James Hall, Associate Editor

June 5, 2002

"Leaning Left"

James Hall President George W. Bush (R-TX) (AP) When President Bush declared last fall that the nation's top priority was gaining energy independence, he placed a small, almost unnoticed asterisk next to the statement. It read: "Unless said policy threatens my reelection." The President Bush that conservatives praised as principled and unswervingly moral has turned out to flip-flop his principled positions on education, free trade, foreign policy, and on energy policy--on just about any issue that might trouble his election prospects.

A recent flip-flop was the bailout of brother Jeb Bush's reelection hopes this week by removing perhaps the biggest obstacle to Jeb's reelection: the prospect of drilling for offshore gas near Destin, Florida in the panhandle, and of mining and searching for oil in the Everglades. When Jeb stopped by the White House, brother George came up with $280 million to buy out all the energy company leases to drill and mine off the Florida gulf coast and the Everglades.

Other than filial love, why should George care about Jeb's electoral troubles? He didn't in the aftermath of a summer of high energy prices in 2001 and of course 9/11, when the White House advanced an energy policy that included exploring and drilling for more oil and natural gas off the coasts of Florida and California, in ANWR and the Rocky Mountains.

But things have changed since. Energy prices have stabilized at lower levels. Environmental groups flexed their muscles and successfully blocked drilling in ANWR. And the President realized the dangerous symbolism of a Jeb Bush loss in Florida in 2002 and began thinking ahead to Florida as a state he must win himself in 2004.

This flip-flop isn't an isolated event, either. The flip-flops began last spring when the president, to get an education bill through Congress, gave up private school vouchers and lots of money for Democratic education programs. It continued when free trader Bush added tariffs on imported steel and Canadian lumber to support union jobs in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest over the lower price of imported steel and lumber and continued when he signed an anticompetitive farm bill.

Then there's the flip-flop on foreign policy, when a noninterventionist Bush suddenly began to intervene in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, futilely ordering Ariel Sharon to withdraw his tanks from the West Bank.

The latest flip-flop, which the Bush administration committed more quietly last week, was to change its position on global warming. In a report to the UN required by the Rio Treaty (signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in 1990), the administration admitted that not only did global warming exist, but that it is caused in large part by human beings burning coal and oil. The reports forecasts the loss of coastal lowlands, ice-melt water that many western communities rely on for drinking water, and the demise of alpine meadows that global warming will cause in the United States. See "Climate Action Report 2002".

The Bush decision on offshore drilling near Florida will undoubtedly please environmentalists, residents of Florida's coasts, and the tourist industry there. But it undermines the energy self-sufficiency argument that Republicans have tried to make. Already California Governor Gray Davis is calling for the federal government to buy back offshore leases near his state, and Colorado and other Rocky Mountain states are sure to follow. It will be hard for the Bush administration to turn them down cold and not answer to charges of brotherly favoritism.

Bush has put enormous energy into an early 2004 reelection bid. He's raised huge amounts of soft money for the Republican Party, doing on average two fund-raisers a week. He's been on the road almost every week, giving speeches and campaigning, particularly in swing states that were close races for him in 2000.

But conservatives have begun to wonder out loud about Bush's adherence to political polls and his willingness to change his political course--the famous technique of "triangulation" that conservatives so hated about the Clinton administration. Did they elect a rock-ribbed conservative true to his values, or just another politician willing to do anything to win? ***

Photo of the author courtesy of staff files
Photo of President George W. Bush (R-TX) courtesy of the Associated Press