Redstate

The magical power of Hope and Change

By Kevin Holtsberry Posted in 2008 | 2008 Presidential Campaign | Barack Obama | Bill Clinton | Energy Policy | Jimmy | Obamafiles — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Obama continues to insist that his plans to use government to solve our energy challenges will work despite a long history of failure. Bill Clinton tried and failed but Obama won't because things are different:

The overall Obama economic approach echoes the 1992 presidential platform of Bill Clinton, who also launched his bid for the White House seeking a big expansion in infrastructure spending. But those plans were quickly shelved once he reached the White House. Congress rejected a proposal to steeply increase energy taxes, which could have been used to pay for the spending.

Clinton deficit hawks, especially then-White House economic adviser Robert Rubin, successfully argued that slashing the deficit would have a bigger impact on growth than boosting spending because markets would react favorably to a shrinking deficit. "Rubinomics" became the reigning Clinton economic strategy, and many labor leaders backing Sen. Obama worry that the 46-year-old senator ultimately will turn to Mr. Rubin, as Mr. Clinton did.

Sen. Obama waved off that concern. "I've got Bob Rubin on one hand [as an adviser] and [former Labor Secretary] Bob Reich on the other....I tend to be eclectic." Mr. Reich, has long championed infrastructure spending to boost jobs and the economy, and is a favorite of labor. He frequently and famously feuded with Mr. Rubin early in Mr. Clinton's term over the administration's ideological direction.

The chances of pushing through an infrastructure spending program are greater now than they were in 1992, Sen. Obama said, because of new concern about energy prices. Many alternative-energy projects -- clean-coal technology, wind-power generators and the like -- could be packaged as infrastructure. "The difference I would suggest is that there is a strong recognition in the public mind that we can't continue on our current energy path," he said. That means "there's a bigger opening to bring about change."

Its the magic of Change, you see. Obama is for it and so is the public. Presto! Outdated industrial policy magically works!

What's that you say? Haven't we tried this before? Yes, in fact we have. For more on that read on.

Turns out Democrats have been promising big government solutions of this sort for a while now:

Sen. Obama regularly compares the energy effort to President Kennedy's project to rocket a man to the moon in the 1960s. But the record of using government funds to produce big breakthroughs in commercial technology is spotty at best. The few projects that have succeeded were often small and aimed at limited research goals.

Under President Carter, the U.S. tried and failed to build a synthetic-fuel industry in the 1970s. (Sen. McCain has taken to saying Sen. Obama would represent "Jimmy Carter's second term.") Plans to build commercial nuclear reactors that would produce more nuclear material than they consumed also failed, and a half-century of government investment in commercial hydrogen reactors haven't produced the necessary breakthroughs.

More recently the Clinton administration, at the urging of then-Vice President Al Gore, spent heavily on a project with the Big Three auto makers to build a higher-tech family car that produced three times the gas mileage of a conventional car. The car was never built and the Bush administration killed the project. At a rally in Detroit Monday night, Mr. Gore announced his endorsement of Sen. Obama.

That last sentence is a killer. Gore failed, but endorsed Obama to try again anyway.

Well, you can say this for Obama: he may lack Gore's experience but he makes up for it with a winning personality.

I guess Obama is going to charm his way to energy independence. Because his outdated policies sure aren't going to help.

Cross posted at the Stop Him Now Blog.