Barack Obama Shows Off His Energy Smarts on Gas Tax Holiday

As the ad campaigns intensified before tonight's primaries, Hillary Clinton made the seriously Energy Dumb decision to promote a gas tax holiday as a way of demonstrating her supposed affinity for "the hard working American middle class."  Too bad the gas tax holiday won't help anybody's pocketbook but the oil companies. I guess Mrs. Clinton missed the memo from every single energy and economic policy expert out there! (Seriously, every one of them!)

While his opponent pandered for votes with empty promises of $30.00 in cash, Barack Obama, to his very strong credit, took the Energy Smart position and called the gas tax holiday proposal what it is: "a pander," a cheap trick to buy your vote.

Read on to watch Obama's clear, honest, Energy Smart response on the gas tax holiday (speaking on Meet the Press earlier this week)...

Well said Mr. Obama.  Well said.  Bravo for making this Energy Dumb gas tax proposal into an opportunity to talk about the urgent need to free America from our oil addiction and spark a clean energy economy.

I also think Obama deserves credit for openly stating he'd learned from a past mistake: Obama voted for a gas tax holiday in Illinois when he was a state senator and now openly acknowledges that was a mistake.  The gas tax holiday was a failed policy in Illinois, and it'll be a failed policy for America.  

After 7 years of a President Bush who'll never acknowledge a huge mistake (*cough*Iraq!*cough), I welcome a president who learns from his errors.

In contrast, Senator Clinton, who said herself that a New York state gas tax holiday proposal in 2000 would be "a bad deal for New York and a potential bonanza for the oil companies."  She had it right then.  Now she's get it wrong.

Obama learns.  Clinton panders.  Which do you think is a more admirable trait?

Related posts:

-"Energy Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest" by A. Siegel at Energy Smart.
-"Holiday on Ice - What North Carolina and Indiana Tell Us About Future Oil and Climate Policy" by Joe Romm at Climate Progress.
-"Hillary Clinton Supports Seriously Energy Dumb Gas Tax Holiday" at WattHead.
-"Dumb as We Wanna Be" by Thomas Friedman at NY Times.

•  Tip Jar

  Congrats to Obama for a stellar evening at the polls.  And congrats to the voters of North Carolina and Indiana for seeing through Clinton's Energy Dumb pandering.

  Nothing short of a serious and sustained effort to end our oil addiction will bring us real relief at the pump.  

  by WattHead on Tue May 06, 2008 at 11:20:54 PM PDT

•  good that it is voter tested

  All kinds of misbegotten ideas persist for years because of memory of an electoral defeat, long after voters learned to know better.

  The list includes marijuana laws, even though in several states voters were pretty clear that they favor relaxing.  But ever since Rostenkowski, Ways and Means chairman during Reagan, proposed 50c hike in gasoline tax and failed, GOP was latching to the idea that they are the party of cheap gasoline, and thus they have better contact with the masses than elitist liberals.

  Well, 70% of polled North Carolinians view gas tax rebate as a useless trick.  And it did not sway many of voters in Indiana either.  Message to politicians: (a) voters are not very stupid, (b) the state of "common wisdom" in the heartland is much better than among pundits in Washington.

  I am a "Krugmanist" on economic matters, and it is perhaps the case that by having some more progressive planks in her health program etc. Clinton helped herself.  After all, she had to show that she is more progressive than DLC, and she could not do it by credentials alone -- and everybody has to admit, her campaign was more competitive than predicted.  But "stupid populism" is not rewarded (when tested close to proverbial Peoria).

  by Piotr on Wed May 07, 2008 at 12:43:09 AM PDT