In congress and in Washington consultants’ offices, Democrats think that the Bush energy plan, which the administration will unveil Thursday, is a huge political winner-for them. They believe that its heavy emphasis on production and distribution makes the populist case most Democrats yearn to make: that Republicans in general, and the Bush family in particular, care only about doing the bidding of Big Business, particularly Big Oil. “The energy issue leads to the broader-values issue,” Democratic media consultant Tad Devine told me. “The question becomes, ‘whose side is this guy on?’ And that’s where he’s vulnerable.”
Maybe so, but Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and White House political guru Karl Rove are not fond of suicide missions, and they have not only a plan, but a sales plan. The details include: offering a surprising number of conservation ideas (even if conservation isn’t the core principle); explaining the growing role of free markets in energy; and proposing the construction of new power lines, refineries and pipelines so that competition and supplies can flow more freely from coast to coast.
Four months after Cheney and his task force began assembling the plan, Bush is hitting the road to sell it, with campaignlike stops in Minnesota and Iowa. More important, he is about to travel to a place which, as president, he has not dared enter: the energy-poor (but heavily Democratic) disaster area known as California. Bush, I’ve been told, will visit the Lights-Out State in early June, during the Memorial Day Recess, after making a pit stop in Arizona. (The White House called to ask if the state’s senior senator, John McCain, wanted to join Bush for the trip; they were probably relieved to learn that their political nemesis will be on a junket to Ireland.) California was a no-entry zone for Bush until he had an energy plan in hand. It’s the place where the energy situation is at its worst-and where he’s taken the most political heat for his refusal to order more short-term relief measures. Bush believes that there are only long-term fixes for California’s energy problems (and the nation’s). To make that case, he needed to have his arguments lined up in good order.
The political theme that ties the Bush plan together is what’s important: that market forces, not government controls, are the answer-and that Americans have a right to make their own choices about the energy they use. All they have to do is pay for it.
It’s a risky argument to make. Americans do believe there is an “energy crisis.” But they think that the oil companies and OPEC are largely to blame for creating it. Voters think more production is needed-and, in NEWSWEEK’s most recent public-opinion poll, were even open to the idea of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If given a strict either-or choice, voters think conservation is more important than production.
So what are Bush, Cheney and Rove thinking? First of all, they genuinely believe in a dig-and-drill view of the world, a view nurtured in the Petroleum Clubs of Houston and Midland. That view was solidified during the presidency of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. As Bush & Co. see it, Carter preached a bleak, self-abnegating form of conservation that was anathema to the American spirit-and that helped defeat him in 1980.
As a matter of pure political strategy, the White House is not out to convince everyone of the virtue of its plan. They’ll start, of course, with the people and places that produce energy, states such as Texas and West Virginia. They’ll expect most of the rest of the GOP base to back the plan (though Western Republicans will balk at Cheney’s call for broadened federal power to condemn land for transmission and pipeline right of ways).
Bush’s biggest and toughest sales effort will be with the suburban moderates and swing-state voters I’ve labeled, respectively, Volvo Republicans and Durango Democrats. Volvo Republicans are upscale, non-Bible Belt types who believe in lower taxes, free trade and a nonjudgmental approach to social issues. They are economically conservative but, on matters of energy and the environment, don’t want to be seen as mossbacks.
The Bush plan contains a raft of conservation proposals that the White House hopes will pacify (if not fully satisfy) Volvo Republicans. Bush’s own ranch home will also be part of that effort. It’s a state-of-the-art energy-saving home, complete with the kind of heat pumps and deep-ground cooling systems for which the Bush plan will offer new tax breaks. The aim is to rely on tax incentives, not new federal efficiency standards.
But the real motherlode of support, the Bush White House calculates, can come from what I’m calling Durango Democrats. These are people who value a pristine landscape, but who want to drive through it in their favorite light truck or SUV. The consider themselves environmentalists, but don’t see any conflict in driving a vehicle that gets 10 miles to the gallon. Some live in rural areas: they want to keep their gun and the pickup to put it in. Others are in the metropolitan suburbs.
Bush and Cheney, accordingly, are not proposing that SUVs and light trucks be forced to meet the mileage-efficiency standards that have long since applied to cars. In an interview recently, Cheney told me that such a decision would have to await a new study by the National Academy of Sciences.
But exactly what the NAS can add to the discussion is hard to know. I’m not a Democrat or a Republican, but I know that SUVs are gas-guzzlers. I drive one.
