For a long time now, polls have not been friendly to President George "30%" Bush. He professes to pay them no heed. But just in case he's bored over there in Beijing and is checking out Countdown to Crawford, we present some poll news that might give him some (very) temporary cheer:
On the energy front, an ABC News survey found what the Washington Post characterized as "broad public support for government action." That could translate into new pressure on Congress to push ahead with loosening of restrictions on offshore drilling. The survey found that 63% favor an end to the embargo on new drilling in U.S. coastal waters, the Post reported.
On the other hand, the poll found even stronger support for tougher fuel efficiency standards, an area that has not drawn the same degree of presidential attention, to put it mildly.
But the president may not want to plunge too deeply into the polls.
A survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation looked into the question of how New Orleans residents feel they have been treated by Washington nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.
It found that 60% thought that rebuilding New Orleans was "not a priority" of the president and Congress, and that although 59% said their lives were "almost back to normal" or "largely back to normal," there were still 41% who said their lives were "still very disrupted" or "still somewhat disrupted."
On second thought, rather than reading the blogs, maybe the president would prefer to keep his focus on the Olympics. (In the photo at top, Bush takes in the U.S.-China basketball game with his wife, his father and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.)
In the coming weeks, President Bush will be making a cameo appearance at...the White House.
Between Beijing, where he is watching swimming and basketball competitions and a warm-up baseball game at the Summer Olympic Games this weekend (and, yes, meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao), and a summer break at his home in Crawford, Texas, the president is planning to spend two days at the executive mansion.
While in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday, he is meeting with an energy coalition, participating in a ceremony opening a historic suite of office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House and posing for a photo with the winner of the 2008 National Spelling Bee.
And then, on to Crawford.
For the public schedule, click on Read Full Story...
Increased ethanol in U.S. gasoline has been blamed for a wide swath of global ills -- not the least of them global warming and escalating food prices. Efforts to lower the amount of ethanol blended into the fuel supply brought the conservative Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry, and several environmental groups into the same camp as they tried to persuade the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency to relax the ethanol-to-gasoline ratio.
That effort came to naught today. The EPA announced that it would not lower the so-called Renewable Fuel Standard, despite concerns about emissions and food prices.
Perry, who succeeded President Bush as governor of Texas, had asked the environmental agency in April to waive a requirement that 9 million gallons of ethanol and other renewable fuels be blended into gasoline this year. He said that by putting increasing demands on the supply of corn, the mandate was pushing up the cost of food and animal feed.
He was responding to a requirement imposed last December by Congress in an effort to lower fuel costs and make the United States less dependent on foreign oil.
But EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said this afternoon: "After reviewing the facts, it was clear this request did not meet the criteria in the law."
Perry had sought a 50% cut in the amount of ethanol to be blended into the gasoline supply.
The EPA said this couldn't be done in time to have an impact this year on corn, food or fuel prices.
Response to the decision fell along predictable lines:
The Environmental Working Group's director of government affairs, Sandra Schubert, called the mandate "misguided" and said it was "forcing farmers to plow up marginal land and wildlife habitat while increasing global warming and dumping toxic fertilizers and pesticides into our precious water sources."
"America should be focusing on viable clean energy solutions like conservation, solar and wind," she said.
The president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, Jim Greenwood, said the decision sent "a strong message that we must continue moving forward toward sustainable production of advanced biofuels" to cut dependence on important oil and to increase biofuel production from non-food sources.
His organization represents biotech companies, among others involved in expanding the use of biofuels.
Barack Obama's effort on Tuesday to link John McCain to Vice President Dick Cheney went something like this: McCain and President Bush favor offshore drilling. The vice president headed an energy task force that developed the Bush administration policies. Therefore, McCain and Cheney are in bed when it comes to energy.
In the world of political shorthand, that would seem pretty linear: From A to B to C.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee put it this way in Youngstown, Ohio: "McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook."
It's not the way Shannen Coffin writing in the National Review Online sees it.
Coffin calls Obama's criticism of Cheney "as incoherent as his energy policy."
The NRO item notes this quote from Obama's remarks:
President Bush, he had an energy policy. He turned to Dick Cheney and he said, 'Cheney, go take care of this.' Cheney met with renewable-energy folks once and oil and gas [executives] 40 times. McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook.
Coffin writes that the Illinois senator's criticism suggests that the Cheney task force's recommendations were "all drill and no renewable energy," and notes that the panel's report included a full chapter on renewable energy resources.
Indeed, the article observes:
Obama voted for the Bush White House's energy legislation that stemmed from the report's recommendations in 2005 — a vote that could be viewed as endearing if he hadn't more recently flipped on it as well.
And it notes that Obama, in a Las Vegas television interview this week, said his support for the bill "was motivated by the fact that this was the largest investment in alternative energy in history."
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."
The stock market went up 331 points today, the fourth-largest gain of the year for the Dow Jones Industrial average.
Some credit the Federal Reserve's decision to hold interest rates at their current level.
Others believe that the fall of crude oil to $118 a barrel made Wall Street positively giddy.
But very few know that it was actually the House Republican rebels who sparked the rally, the ones who have been debating to a near-empty chamber while the rest of Congress is on vacation, clamoring for a vote on President Bush's proposal to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling.
“The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,” said Rep. John Shadegg. He's from Arizona. “I think the market realizes that this kind of pressure may in fact lead to a change in policy."
Not if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has anything to say about it. Accusing the Republicans of offering "yesterday's solutions to today's problems," she's resisting pressure to call Congress back from its five-week recess.
But she may not have reckoned on this: tomorrow the Republicans are bringing out their big gun -- drum roll -- the former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich used to be a back-bencher in Congress. The Georgia congressman led the GOP revolt in 1994 and the conservative Republicans' "Contract with America" allowed them to wrest control of the House from Democrats, changing the nature of Bill Clinton's presidency and the face of U.S. politics.
As Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan put it: “It is fitting the leader of the first Republican revolution now returns to support this Republican revolution for American energy security and independence.”
--Johanna Neuman
Photo: Tim Boyle/Bloomberg
Correction: An earlier version of this post mistakenly reported that Rep. McCotter is from Missouri. He is from Michigan. Our apologies.
To listen today to Barack Obama, it's all Dick Cheney's fault.
An "economy in turmoil." An energy policy developed by the vice president. Add it up and the all-but-certain Democratic presidential nominee has a combo of issues he is pushing to the top of his agenda today, and making the connection to John McCain, his Republican opposition.
"McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook," Obama said in Youngstown, Ohio, a Democratic stronghold in a perennial battleground state.
Indeed, Cheney, who interrupted his government service to work in the oil business in Texas in the 1990s, has long been seen as the bete noir in the Bush administration energy policy -- and his role drew even more attention as gasoline prices climbed dramatically in recent months.
With that policy now under attack, it's no surprise that Obama sought to connect McCain to Cheney.
Here's how he did it, his words relayed to Countdown to Crawford by the Times' Peter Nicholas, who is traveling with Obama:
You won't hear me say this often but I actually agree with what McCain said a few weeks ago. Our dangerous dependence on foreign oil was 30 years in the making.... What he neglected to mention was that he was there 26 of those 30 years. He was there. Unless all the bad stuff was done in the four years that he wasn't there. During those years he voted against renewable sources of energy, against biofuels, solar and wind power. And unfortunately in this election McCain has proposed an energy plan that is the same.
Obama continued:
Cheney met with renewable energy once and oil companies 40 times. He has offered a gas tax holiday that at best would give you 30 cents a day for three months but assuming that the gas company would pass that on to you. McCain is offering $4 billion more in tax breaks to the biggest companies in America -- ExxonMobil, that just announced the largest profits in history. You are paying nearly $3.70 a gallon in gas. Two and a half what it cost when George Bush took office. They had a plan. The problem was that it was the oil company plan and it wasn't a people plan and we need a people plan. And that is why I am running for president.
It all reflects an effort to tie McCain to the oil industry, the Associated Press' Tom Raum noted. Problem is, he adds, McCain has no direct links to the industry, unlike Cheney and President Bush himself.
Obama is also using a new ad to draw attention to what he says is Big Oil's $2-million in campaign contributions to McCain.
He doesn't mention the $400,000 from oil company executives that, according to the McCain campaign, have helped the Obama effort.
This is Day Two of the GOP revolt over energy, and the debate is taking place in a darkened House floor with no microphones, no lights and no C-SPAN cameras (on orders of the Democratic speaker). So Republican congressmen pushing for an up-or-down vote on offshore oil drilling have taken to twittering (notifying an army of folks, in 40-word bites), posting Qik and YouTube videos and corralling unsuspecting tourists to plead their case to the public.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi adjourned the House Friday over Republican objections, saying that offshore oil drilling is a false hope and that rushing back from vacation to vote on it would "mislead the American people as to thinking it's going to reduce the price at the pump." At the White House, spokesman Tony Fratto said the president would not call Congress back from vacation because Pelosi might then just gavel them back into recess again. Sort of a physical manifestation of the policy gridlock that already consumes Washington.
So in the meantime, the GOP congressmen keep returning to the darkened floor. The Hill newspaper reported that some have come with props: Rep. Steve King of Iowa arrived carrying a large photo of Pelosi with a caption quoting her as saying, "I am trying to save the planet." Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee came with an empty red gas can and an energy efficient light bulb.
Not to be outdone in the theatrics department, MoveOn.org folks headed up to Capitol Hill this afternoon to pass out stickers describing the GOP as the Grand Oil (instead of Old) Party. Gosh, cynics might suggest that Congress doesn't get this much attention when they're in town!
The best free show in town continues all week, and maybe throughout the month, say the Republicans.
Lately President Bush has been getting a bit sentimental about saying goodbye. With less than six months left on his presidency, he tells most audiences how much he loves them and how honored he's been to serve as their president. It's a bit unexpected, sort of like he's channeling Oprah.
Today in a speech at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, he told the West Virginia Coal Assn. that he marvels at the country's entrepreneurial spirit.
"I love the fact that people go from nothing to something ... I love the fact that we've got people who understand the dangers we face ... I marvel at the fact that we've got a country where people say, 'I want to serve and to wear the uniform of the United States.'... And I am constantly amazed at the millions of acts of kindness and compassion that take place on a daily basis in the United States of America ... We've got people who feed the hungry, provide care for the homeless, love a neighbor in need -- and it doesn't require one law from Washington D.C. ...This is a compassionate, decent, fantastic country, and it's been my honor to be your president for seven and a half years. I'm proud to be here with you. I'm proud to call you friend.
Bush has reason to call the folks in West Virginia friends. Back in 2002, having been elected with the unexpected help of the state's five electoral votes, Bush slapped a tariff on imported steel to help West Virginia steel makers. It was a surprise to voters who believed his free-trade rhetoric from the campaign.
But today he might have sensed that he had gone a little heavy on the feel-your-joy thing. So he quickly shifted into guy-joke territory.
"This is not a farewell address," he said to laughter. "I'm sprinting to the finish."
President Bush began the day with a renewed pitch to Congress to join him in dropping the ban on offshore exploration for oil. To listen to him, it is only the Democratic-led Congress that is holding up drilling--and thus, by his reasoning, holding up oil prices.
Hours later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) fired back: "The president knows, as his own administration has stated, that the impact of any new drilling will be insignificant--promising savings of only pennies per gallon many years down the road."
And for those who say that the drilling would be beyond the horizon, perhaps 50 miles offshore, she added: "What Americans should realize is that what the president is calling for is drilling as close as three miles off of America's pristine beaches and in other protected areas."
Next up? The president speaks Thursday in West Virginia. No ocean beaches there--but there is plenty of coal.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said Bush would talk about using technology to make coal a cleaner source of energy and the expansion of nuclear power.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
sentimental about saying goodbye. 
With less than six months left on his presidency, he tells most audiences how much he loves them and how honored he's been to serve as their president. It's a bit unexpected, sort of like he's channeling Oprah. 
