EconomistMom.com

I wrote what I consider a ”parallel post” on McCain (and Social Security taxes) just a few days ago–and now this is just more evidence that McCain and Obama are indeed living “parallel campaigns,” with more similarities (regarding moving in the same ways) than you realize if you’re just focused on their lines never crossing.

In today’s Washington Post, Perry Bacon and Michael Shear report on Obama’s “flip flop” on energy policy–the “parallel” in my mind to McCains “flip flop” on Social Security taxes:

[Obama's] proposal [to release oil from the strategic petroleum reserve] comes a month after Obama said he would consider using oil from the reserves only in a “genuine emergency”…

…The proposal, along with Obama’s comments last week that he would consider expanding offshore drilling as part of a comprehensive energy bill, illustrated how both candidates are trying to find quick fixes to $4-a-gallon gas and other rising energy costs. McCain had also opposed additional offshore drilling until reversing his position in June, and he has called for a suspension of the federal gas tax.

Note that the Washington Post story reports how the Obama campaign explains this apparent flip-flop:

Aides said the plan is not a reversal because he would replace light crude oil in the reserves with less-expensive heavy crude. They also noted that the senator from Illinois last week described the country’s economic conditions as an “emergency.”

as does an AP story by Tom Raum describing the mere “swapping” or “borrowing” (not forever releasing) that Obama’s proposing:

Obama said that, under his plan, oil companies would bid to borrow easily refinable light sweet oil from the reserve, and replace it later with heavier oil.

Elgie Holstein, an Obama energy adviser, said that while fewer refineries now are capable of refining the heavier stuff into gasoline, that won’t be the case in the future.

(So we’d just be borrowing under what’s deemed an “emergency” situation… counting on it to be easier to pay back in the future.  Sound familiar?)

So what’s the deal?  I mean, it’s not that the candidates don’t understand there are no “quick-fix” ways to lower gasoline prices.  Again, from the Post:

[T]heir proposals reflect a problem both candidates face: There are few ways to dramatically reduce gas prices, even as voters demand solutions.

Obama emphasized on Monday that using reserves is a temporary fix and that drilling is not “a particularly meaningful short-term or long-term solution.” McCain has said that drilling would have a “psychological” benefit for consumers; his proposal to suspend the 18-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax was ignored by lawmakers on Capitol Hill and criticized by economists, who said it would not lead to a noticeable change in prices.

Let’s be real–this is just the campaign talking, not necessarily the next Administration talking…or we can hope.  The candidates are just responding to their audiences, to their potential supporters, and right now the public is angry about gasoline prices, and they want to hear that the candidates have a (quick) plan to do something about it.

AP’s Tom Raum again, in a later story from this evening:

With polls showing increasing numbers of voters favoring oil drilling off the U.S. coast, Obama has scrambled in recent days to add new elements to his overall long-term energy policy of promoting fuel-efficient autos and developing alternate energy sources. He dropped his total opposition to more oil drilling if a limited, environmentally careful offshore plan would help pass a long-term energy bill. He also reversed himself to advocate release of oil from the nation’s strategic reserve to help drive down gasoline prices in the short-run.

On energy policy, Obama’s trying to signal a willingness to compromise, to move to the middle, to talk to whoever is listening to him at the moment…  just as McCain does when he talks about Social Security taxes.  So yes, of course, they’re both trying to have it both ways…

And just like on Social Security, if you cut through the campaign veneer, it still looks to me as if there’s actually quite a contrast between the underlying starting positions the candidates take on energy policy–I mean, on real energy policy for the longer run, not just for the next few months.  As I’ve written before, economic theory tells us there are two fundamental ways to reduce gasoline prices:  increase supply, or decrease demand.  The distinction the two candidates have tried to draw between themselves, at least as I’ve seen it up until now, is that Obama’s energy strategy tends to emphasize reducing demand for fossil fuels (and increasing supply of alternative fuels), while McCain’s energy strategy tends to emphasize increasing supply of fossil fuels (as well as nuclear energy–what McCain referred to today as his “all of the above” approach).

But at that campaign veneer level, they really just want to come up with any (even silly) idea that might sound (at least to most people) as if it could possibly reduce gasoline prices now.  And if they’re the same ideas as their opponent’s, they’ll just claim they came up with them first, or argue that their opponent doesn’t really mean it.  Hopefully the voters can look past the surface antics and the melodrama to try to understand the candidates’ true, deep, lasting (and maybe quite different) attitudes towards energy policy, because those are the attitudes that will matter once the next Administration takes office.