Well, since it looks like we're finally going to cave - excuse me: since it looks like congressional Democrats are finally going to cave - on this bad joke of an offshore- drilling fiasco, I say let's make the most of it: Let's turn the table on the Republicans, who have up to this point been making political hay with this inane issue.
Since the logic of the reductio ad absurdum argument of Okay, pal, exactly where do we stop drilling - your backyard? appears to be utterly lost on the majority of the American electorate in its oil-starved fevered panic, I say we turn around and pull a Rove. Let’s attack their strength. Let's get more visceral, more jingoistic, more patriotic, more freakin’ Amrkin than they could ever hope to possibly get:
You wanna drill for oil in America? Fine – every bit of that oil you drill in America, stays in America, for use by Americans.
Now, please don't bother trying to explain to me how the world oil market works; I sort of understand it already, as does anybody with a lick of sense and a junior high schooler’s grasp of economics.
But here's the beauty of this proposal: all of that explanation you were getting ready to give me? Yeah - that's going to be the oil companies’ job, and the Republican congressional leaders’ job - they’re going to be the ones in the awkward position of explaining how in reality the oil extracted from ANWR or from the outer continental shelf won’t belong to America or Americans - it’ll become the property of ExxonMobil or British Petroleum or Texaco or Shell Oil.
That is the explanation that we need to force the oil companies and the Republican puppets into making. Once they do, it’s over. As Democrats know all too well,
Once you have to explain, you’ve lost.
Attaching the simple and oh-so-patriotic proviso on any proposed new drilling agreements that any oil extracted from American territory under those agreements must physically remain in the United States would effectively kill those bills. It would put the Republicans and their petroleum puppet masters in the same no-win situation in which Democrats have so often found themselves: having to explain.
There is no love lost between American consumers and oil companies. When Republicans are forced to explain that, Well, gee, ahh, actually, the oil that’s taken out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and from off the Florida coast won’t, ahh, actually, uhh, belong to Americans, you can be darn sure those angry Americans won’t be particularly inclined to bend over – yet again – for the oil companies.
This is a strategy that the Democrats should employ immediately and forcefully. Congressional Democrats can turn this issue into a huge win on many levels: they can be shown to be willing to compromise on issues that go straight to the American pocketbook, they can be shown to be strong on national security by working hard to reduce America's reliance on foreign oil, they can be shown to be "America First"-ers who insist upon keeping America's resources at home for Americans to use.
The unfortunate reality is that in many political confrontations, whoever comes up with a simple explanation for a complex problem - however ineffective such a simple solution might in reality be - wins the day. Republicans have elevated the sale of simplistic ideas into an art form, and people - as evidenced by the recent oil-drilling mass stupidity - continue to buy into it. Democrats can now turn this unfortunate reality to their advantage and come out looking stronger than they had previously on a host of traditional "Republican" issues.
The beauty of this strategy is its very simplicity:
Keep American oil in America, for Americans.
Any fifth-grader would understand it. Its logic is unassailable. The only way its logic can be defeated is by an explanation of how the oil market actually works - and once the Republicans and the oil companies have to grab hold of that Tar Baby (pun definitely intended), they will look like utter fools, and Americans will have absolutely no use for them. The Republicans and their oil company backers will finally be shown to be the self-serving, profit-driven, unpatriotic, anti-American, consumer-hating scum that they truly are.
If it fits on a bumper sticker, you win:
American oil, for Americans ONLY
Bring it.
UPDATE, sort of: Because BiPM's comment reminded me of it, and because it's a classic: From The Onion, July 18, 2001:
Bush Vows To Remove Toxic Petroleum From National Parks
WASHINGTON, DC – Vowing to "restore the pristine splendor of America's natural treasures," President Bush Monday unveiled "Project: National Parks Clean-Up," an ambitious program to remove all toxic petrochemical deposits from national parks by 2004.
"Places like Yellowstone and Yosemite were once pure, unspoiled wilderness," Bush said at a White House press conference. "But over the course of the past 10 million years, we have allowed them to become polluted with toxic fossil-fuel deposits, turning a blind eye to the steady build-up of vast quantities of dangerous pollutants. It's time to end this terrible neglect."
UPDATE 2: As pointed out by Rp in the comments, this is hardly a new idea:
Your idea is actually part of the Gang of Ten's proposed New Energy Reform Act of 2008
"Any new domestically produced resources must stay in the United States."
And luckylizard makes a great catch, with C-SPAN video of John Peterson (R-Pa) and Neal Abercrombie (D-Haw), in which a caller makes the assertion that "any oil produced here should stay here," and Peterson nods in agreement and says, "Yes." Then Peterson states,
"It [oil from the U.S.] doesn't go onto the world market . . . I think there was one time, many, many years ago, a few ships were traded; they don't do that any more. It takes a presidential order to do that; it cannot be done unilaterally. All the oil that will be produced offshore will be for this country; it will go no place else, it will not be in the world market."
D'oh!
Here's the link: rtsp://video1.c-span.org/project/energy/energy_wj071608_abercrombie.rm (requitres RealPlayer)
Start listening around the 22:30 mark. Great stuff.