You don’t have to agree with him on the merits of the drilling issue to appreciate this reporter’s take on the politics:
Of course, the Democrats are also (supposedly) the masters of the blown political save, experts at devising new and ever more elaborate means of snatching electoral defeat from the jaws of victory. So it’s only fitting that now, just as energy assumes unprecedented prominence in a presidential campaign, they’ve gone and adopted a maddeningly incomprehensible message that threatens to forfeit the powerful emotional advantage they’ve enjoyed on the subject for decades. . . Making matters worse, the party’s presidential nominee, who showed admirable courage on the issue of a gas tax holiday back in the primary season (for which he was rewarded by the voters), has opted mostly to defer to his Congressional colleagues this summer, parroting their counterproductive rhetoric and allowing John McCain to gain an edge on the issue that wouldn’t have been imaginable a few months ago.
Will it matter? He says:
In the end, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid probably won’t pay a price for this stupidity. Their House and Senate candidates still have enormous built-in advantages, and Democrats will almost certainly increase their numbers in both chambers significantly. But the presidential race is a different story. Obama is playing the Big Oil card that has worked so well in the past for his party, but it’s McCain who’s on the offensive on energy and gas prices.
The bad news for McCain is that the Democrats have time to wander back to work well before by Election Day, fudge on a compromise measure, and change the subject. But the politics is instructive. Obama did not get out in front of this issue, failed to anticipate the groundswell of public opinion, and now is facing a more critical media environment. (And he really should never talk off the cuff — how much time has he spent playing defense on a silly throwaway line on tire inflation?)
And for McCain the lesson is clear: the more aggressive he is, the more innovative his barbs and the more he focuses on what Obama is actually saying and proposing, the better McCain does. Might he do the same on the economy? Stay tuned.