Bush’s Greatest Failure

Filed under: Energy, George W. Bush, National Security — marc moore on May 23, 2008 @ 4:49 am CEST

When I was at the Houston Energy Summit earlier this year the theme that ran the length and breadth of every presentation made was that of energy security. While the oil supply and pricing problems I’ve written about recently have not gone unnoticed in Congress, no concrete action has emerged from that body. Worse, Tom Friedman says that President Bush has not done any better.

I am convinced that the big foreign policy failure that will be pinned on this administration is not the failure to make Iraq work, as devastating as that has been. It will be one with much broader balance-of-power implications — the failure after 9/11 to put in place an effective energy policy.

Friedman’s piece is called Imbalances of Power and here’s why:

If this huge transfer of wealth to the petro-authoritarians continues, power will follow. According to Congressional testimony Wednesday by the energy expert Gal Luft, with oil at $200 a barrel, OPEC could “potentially buy Bank of America in one month worth of production, Apple computers in a week and General Motors in just three days.”

If that doesn’t shake Americans out of their apathy, I don’t know what will, because if you’re reading this and didn’t think something stunningly brilliant like, “Holy crap!”, or local equivalent, call the doctor quick - there’s a good chance you might already be dead.

David Rothkopf, author of Superclass names three deficits that America is suffering from:

“A fiscal deficit that will soon have us choosing between rationed health care, sufficient education, adequate infrastructure and traditional levels of defense spending, a trade deficit that has us borrowing from our rivals to the point of real vulnerability, and a geopolitical deficit that is a legacy of Iraq, which may result in hesitancy to take strong stands where we must.”

All of these deficiencies have their roots in a fundamental lack of energy security. Neither the Democratic Congress nor the Republican president has made any significant contribution to improve this, our Achilles’ heel.

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1 kreiz

May 23, 2008 @ 6:22 pm CEST

I noticed that Friedman focuses entirely on GWB’s failure to attack energy in areas of consumption reduction. That’s fine- I’m all for conservation. But we can’t "save ourselves rich" on this issue- at some point, new energy sources must be developed. However, the blame for this cannot be laid at Bush’s feet, as Dems have consistently resisted aggressive new energy developments- in ANWR, coastal drilling, shale, and nuclear. GWB’s positions on these issues is much more aggressive than the Dems, but GOP efforts in these areas have been thwarted at every turn. The only acceptable new energy areas for Dems are solar and wind- which are fine, except that both of these preferred methodologies lack widespread commercial viability.

Marc, you correctly point out that the Dem congress has responsibility in this arena as well.