Friday, June 20, 2008

McCain’s Oil Checkmate

Sen. John McCain has stumbled onto a winning issue. Oil. Although at first he was a bit squishy on the subject of drilling for oil …excuse me Mr. Luntz, I meant “exploring for energy”… he deserves credit for seeing the opportunity and jumping on it.

The voters are hopping mad about high gas prices and are screaming GIVE US CHEAP OIL!!! Sen. McCain is saying okey dokey, you want cheap oil, I’ll give you cheap oil. We’ll drill off the coasts, we’ll tap oil shale in the Rockies, we’ll build new refineries and throw in a couple dozen nuke plants to boot.

McCain has a Louisville Slugger named “Cheap Oil” and is going to whack Obama with it like a North Vietnamese prison guard.

Obama hasn’t left himself any maneuvering room to escape the pounding. He’s publicly staked out positions against off shore drilling, against fast tracking refinery permits, against oil shale development and he’s not so wild about nuclear power either. He has limited his energy policy to not much more than higher oil taxes and windmills, (as long as they aren’t near Ted Kennedy’s house.)

The only piece missing in McCain’s energy trifecta is ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sen. McCain has said that he won’t drill in ANWR because it’s “a pristine wilderness”. You know, just like Yellowstone National Park - if you dropped the temperature 100 degrees, bulldozed the trees, covered it in frozen mud and added mosquitoes the size of small children. Other than that, it’s just the same.

Obama can defend himself by saying that Sen. McCain isn’t really that hot on providing cheap oil either because he won’t drill in ANWR. To take full advantage of the issue, that hole has to be closed. But our Green Republican (who ironically makes Republicans green) has promised to protect the God forsaken, frozen moonscape as a matter of principle. And we all know what that means. It would be easier to get people to vacation there than for him to change his mind.

It would be a shame to miss this opportunity to nail our New Messiah to his cross of oil. But how can this be done without Sen. McCain abandoning his promise to protect the precious 3 toed arctic mole rat?

I’m here to tell you kids, there is a way.

ANWR is over 30,000 square miles. Extracting the oil would need about 3 square miles. Sen. McCain should go back to the Senate and introduce a bill to exchange 3 square miles for drilling, for 300 square miles added to the refuge elsewhere. He would have the best of both worlds. Oil for the voters now, and hundreds of additional square miles of frozen wasteland preserved for our great grandchildren to ignore.

With a 100 to 1 land for oil swap, Sen. McCain could keep doing his Teddy Roosevelt of the Arctic routine and force Sen. Obama to vote against giving the voters cheaper oil.

Even the mole rats would be happy.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

The Racial Catch 22

At the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960's, the challenge was persuading white America to accept the vision of a post racial society. 40 years later, that same desire for a post racial America is preventing us from confronting a new racial problem.

When Reverend Jeremiah Wright's offensive sermons came to light, they were generally viewed through a political lens. Cable news and talk radio gorged themselves on debate about how it would affect the presidential campaign. Reverend Wright was labeled as either a serious political liability, or as an aberration that could be dismissed as just one of those inexplicable storms that pass in an election year.

What was missing was a serious discussion of what it told us about ourselves.

More recently at the Trinity United Church of Christ, Father Michael Pfleger preached a sermon just as racially offensive as those given by Reverend Wright. And just as with Reverend Wright, the media focused on the man in the pulpit and not on the congregation that rose to its feet and cheered his message.

What we all saw in those videos was not simply a cultural difference. The vast majority of Americans were shocked, not by an unfamiliar style or tradition of worship. We were shocked because we saw the kind of open bigotry and racial animus that we believed had been consigned to our past. We were slapped in the face with the harsh reality that our post racial image of America was wrong.

The original American sin of racism that so many of us believed was largely wiped clean, was only in hiding, pushed into corners of our society where most of us never looked. The video revolution became our eyes and looked into that corner for us. We should be grateful that we saw the truth.

Accepting this revelation will be difficult. Changing our core assumptions about what kind of nation we are, especially when it is in such a negative way, will encounter understandable resistance. We have become comfortable thinking of ourselves as having put the worst of racial conflict behind us, with just a few loose ends to tidy up when we have time.

As if this was not difficult enough, coming to terms with it has been made immeasurably more difficult by its partisan political implications. The groups most likely to support Senator Obama are progressives, the young and African Americans. These are the same groups who once led the civil rights movement. They fought to persuade America to face its racism so that we could overcome it. Now they are caught in a gut wrenching contradiction.

Electing the first African American President would be a beautiful gift to the American soul. It would be an affirmation of all that we think we have achieved in overcoming our painful past. But to receive that gloriously self affirming gift, it is politically necessary to define Trinity United as a church that is not racist. Pointing out the deep racial hostility at Trinity United has been variously described as a distraction from real issues, dirty politics or a lack of understanding of the black church tradition.

The new generation that should be leading the fight against racism, has been forced to choose between the conflicting goals of electing an African American President, or confronting the reality of racism that still exists. They have chosen the more pleasing path and forgotten where that path was supposed to lead.

We can stop and congratulate ourselves for the racial progress we have made, or we can continue the struggle. We cannot do both.