Bush lampooned as snake oil salesman

The depiction of the president as a salesman started as an ad for the Natural Resources Defense Council's action fund, the environmental group's fundraising arm. The ad is part of a campaign to raise funds and awareness in the fight against President Bush's proposal to drill for oil offshore. The pitch:

Tell your representative and senators to stop the giveaway of our coasts. Tell them you won't stand for billions more for oil companies -- and snake oil for the rest of us.

The full-page print ad, placed in the Washington Post and other outlets, called the president's proposal to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling "a cruel Shell game. And BP game. And ExxonMobil game."

And the ad asked:

Want gas at $1 a gallon? America needs a bold new approach to energy, from more fuel-efficient vehicles to plug-in hybrids and electric cars. A cleaner electric grid powered by renewables. Existing technologies could have us driving at the equivalent of a buck a gallon for gas!

But now conservatives are accusing the action fund of its own hucksterism in suggesting that renewable energy development will produce $1 a gallon gas.

In a blog on American Thinker, Thomas Lifson calls it "the slippery rhetoric of an infomercial" and suggests, "Expanding supply with proven technologies is snake oil, but promising $1 dollar gasoline from unproven technologies isn't? These people are suffering from severe irony deficiency."

-- Johanna Neuman