Presidency runs low on gas

George W. Bush has some convincing to do after his State of the Union set-piece speech this week, reports Washington correspondent Geoff Elliott
February 04, 2006
'TO give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel - from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun."

That was Democrat president Jimmy Carter in 1979, in his famous speech outlining an economic and spiritual malaise in America. Now George W. Bush has taken a line or two from Carter's book to try to convince Americans to end their "addiction to oil" and find economic salvation in alternative fuels.

What makes Bush's call so extraordinary is not so much that he once made his living as an oil man in Texas, nor that he is a believer in free markets, but that Carter is regarded by Bush's Republicans as something of a joke and here's Bush echoing him.

In 1979, with soaring inflation and long queues at petrol stations, Carter made this pledge: "Beginning this moment, this nation will never again use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 - never."

On Wednesday, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush said technology would enable the US to "help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 per cent of our imports from the Middle East by 2025". That is to be achieved through alternative fuels such as solar, wind and conversion of vegetable products into ethanol. Incredulity is probably the kindest way to describe the reaction from energy experts to Bush's plans.

The US is the largest producer, consumer and net importer of energy in the world. There are more 200 million cars in the US. Americans guzzle 20 million barrels of oil a day. That's the equivalent of 1.5 billion litres of petrol a day, or put it another way, 5 litres every day for each of America's 300 million citizens, young and old.

Oil provides 97 per cent of the energy for US transportation. And save for a period after Carter's efforts to curb oil imports by introducing quotas, petrol rationing and a directive to force energy utilities to burn more coal rather than oil, imports of oil have kept rising. In 1973, the US consumed 17.3 million barrels of oil a day. Now that stands at 20.6 million but the percentage of imported oil has risen sharply. Then America imported 35 per cent of its oil needs, now it's running at 60 per cent.

It's no coincidence, nor hardly surprising, that the call from presidents over the years for US energy independence has been greatest when oil prices are highest. In 2004 dollar terms, oil peaked in 1979 at $US80 a barrel.

President Richard Nixon also faced soaring oil prices in 1974, OPEC using oil as a diplomatic bludgeon for leverage after the Arab-Israeli War in October 1973. Nixon said then that America's goal should be that "in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need".

Now oil is nudging $US70 (about $90) a barrel and Bush is championing a new green future talking about producing ethanol for use in cars made from "wood chips, stalks or switch grass".

It was too much for the conservative The Wall Street Journal. In a mocking editorial this week it said, "President Bush has seen the energy future, and he has two words of advice: wood chips. Somewhere in his cardigan sweater next to a fireplace, Jimmy Carter is smiling.

"To the casual observer, one of the most striking things about President Bush's State of the Union address was his wholesale adaptation of the Democratic Party's rhetoric regarding energy," adds Jerry Taylor, scholar and energy expert at the free-market thinktank Cato. "Veterans on all sides of the energy debate in Washington cannot fail to detect a strong whiff of political cynicism in the air."

It's not lost on Bush that his job approval numbers reflect the price of petrol and are down in the low 40s. Critical mid-term elections are coming up in November and with the mood of the country turning sour, Bush is trying to shore up support to ensure there's no loss of Republican majorities in either the House or Senate, or both, in Congress.

Thomas Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said Bush's energy pitch was a "dramatic rhetorical change" but added the policies to implement his goals were "embarrassingly modest". "Without higher fuel efficiency standards and/or energy taxes, the objectives can't be taken seriously," Mann says. "As for the goal of reducing our dependence on Middle East oil by 75 per cent, it's almost meaningless. Bush and his party now look bereft of ideas, diminished by perceptions of incompetence and corruption, and at risk of losing their political control of Washington. The speech did more to underscore that vulnerability than to overcome it."

Indeed, Bush probably outlined, even better than his critics, the sense of insecurity Americans are feeling at the moment, largely thanks to the war on terror but also because of the rise of economies like China and India.

"We really are the envy of the world - our economy is the envy of the world," Bush said in Nashville the day after his Congressional address. "And yet people are changing jobs a lot, and there's competition from India and China which creates some uncertainty.

"My worry is that people see that uncertainty and decide to adopt isolationist policies or protectionist policies. In other words, in uncertain times it's easy for people to lose confidence in the capacity of this country to lead and to shape our future."

In this, there's another echo of the sentiments Carter enunciated in 1979. A sense of vulnerability. At one point this week Bush described himself as "Educator in Chief". But Bush, with three years left to run, will hope any parallels to Carter stop there - in 1979 Carter's presidency was sliding into oblivion. Instead Bush has charted a new optimistic vision of an energy-independent America.

The President's week began well when the Senate confirmed federal judge Samuel Alito as a Supreme Court justice 58-42, despite Democratic Party misgivings Bush's nominee would tip the country's highest court to the Right. But no sooner had Alito joined the court than he voted against three other conservatives, chief Justice John Roberts and judges Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, confirming a stay of execution in Missouri.

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