Oops, what I meant to drive was...
Barack Obama showed up for a sparsely-attended news conference in Brentwood Tuesday to outline his plans to reduce greenhouse gases. The scene was a gas station that sells fuel made from vegetable oils. Good so far.
Trouble was he drove up in one of those big hulking SUVs that political campaigns (and the Secret Service) are so fond of driving. "When I'm president," Obama said, "any vehicle purchased by the federal government" will have a flexible fuel system that can run on ethanol. "Government should lead the way," he said.
His stop in Brentwood, meant to underline his green credentials, came on a day when Obama quietly backtracked on his longheld support for a controversial plan to promote the use of coal, as Peter Wallsten explains in a Times story this morning.
According to The Times' Seema Mehta at the Brentwood gas station, Obama acknowledged he is behind Hillary Clinton by double-digits in this week's Times Poll. "These polls are going to fluctuate and gyrate," he said. But he predicted a good showing in next month's quarterly campaign fundraising reports.
"We haven't gotten into the guts of this campaign," Obama said. "That will happen after Labor Day."
Whatever happened to starting campaigns after Labor Day of the election year, not the year before?
— Andrew Malcolm
Photo: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.); Credit: Chris Carlson / AP
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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I can't help but wonder about Obama. All this talk about global warming and he drives to a press conference in a huge SUV? Does he get it? Sure does make you wonder. And supporting Coal To Liquids is downright frightening. Who are his advisors? Exxon? Get with it Obama -you're supposed to be our great hope.
Posted by: Nancy LaPlaca | June 18, 2007 at 04:00 PM