Imagine for a minute, just a minute, that someone running for president was able to actually tell the truth, the real truth, to the American people about what would be the best \u201d\u201d I mean really the best \u201d\u201d energy policy for the long-term economic health and security of our country. I realize this is a fantasy, but play along with me for a minute. What would this mythical, totally imaginary, truth-telling candidate say?<\/p>\n
For starters, he or she would explain that there is no short-term fix for gasoline prices. Prices are what they are as a result of rising global oil demand from India, China and a rapidly growing Middle East on top of our own increasing consumption, a shortage of \u201csweet\u201d\u009d crude that is used for the diesel fuel that Europe is highly dependent upon and our own neglect of effective energy policy for 30 years.<\/p>\n
Cynical ideas, like the McCain-Clinton summertime gas-tax holiday, would only make the problem worse, and reckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounted cigarettes to teenagers.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t say it better than my friend Tim Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics, did in a Memorial Day essay in The Washington Post: \u201cSo Dodge wants to sell you a car you don\u2019t really want to buy, that is not fuel-efficient, will further damage our environment, and will further subsidize oil states, some of which are on the other side of the wars we\u2019re currently fighting. … The planet be damned, the troops be forgotten, the economy be ignored: buy a Dodge.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n