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This Flip Is Bound To Flop

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August 4, 2008

Most of the criticism directed against Barack Obama this past week concerned what has been described as his “Celebrity” status.   The McCain camp actually believes that this theme hurts Obama.  Greg Sargent reported in TalkingPointsMemo.com that McCain is spending over $140,000 per day to run the ad featuring Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.  This, according to Sargent, amounts to roughly one third of McCain’s TV ad spending.  Meanwhile, many of us in the audience are wondering whether this ad campaign may actually be helping Obama.  Given America’s fascination with celebrities, might some people be motivated to vote for Obama simply to put a celebrity in the White House?

For his part, Obama disappointed many of us last week with his “flip” on the issue of offshore oil drilling.  There is unanimous consensus among experts on the point that planning new offshore oil rigs will do nothing to effect the availability of gasoline for approximately ten years.  By then, we will likely have the infrastructure and technology available for cost-effective electric cars.  Nevertheless, Obama appeared to be reacting to mounting pressure from the Republicans to allow for more offshore drilling.  Worse yet, new poll results reveal that a majority of Americans actually believe that enacting legislation to permit more offshore drilling would reduce the price of gasoline now.  A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released on July 30 revealed that 69% of the respondents favored offshore drilling, with 51% actually believing that legislation approving increased offshore drilling would lower oil prices within the next year.  The people participating in these polls were probably the same poll participants who expressed belief (and who probably still do believe) that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the September 11 attacks.  Rather than attempting to educate those “low information voters” on the futility of planning more oil platforms to solve today’s problems, Obama has chosen to drink the Kool Aid favored by McCain and announce that he supports expanded offshore drilling.  One would have expected this issue to die when McCain had to cancel a speech he was going to give on an oil rig, because of Hurricane Dolly on July 24.  If he wanted to, Obama could have chosen to ridicule McCain for this failed stunt and criticize McCain’s claim that Hurricanes Rita and Katrina did not damage any oil rigs located in the Gulf of Mexico.  As reported by Michael Shear of The Washington Post on July 23, those hurricanes actually destroyed 113 oil rigs, contrary to McCain’s claim.

The article by Adam Smith and Wes Allison of The St. Petersburg Times on August 1, contrasted Obama’s earlier campaign promise with his current position.  Quoting a speech given by the candidate early this summer, they included this passage:

“And when I am president,” Obama said in June in Chicago, “I will keep the moratorium in place and prevent oil companies from drilling off Florida’s coasts.  That’s how we can protect our coasts and still make the investments that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and bring down gas prices for good.”

Obama’s new position on this subject goes back to that same type of compromise we saw him demonstrate by voting in favor of the FISA “wiretap” bill.  The voting public is not likely to see this type of weak compromise as the sort of “change” promised by the sign on the podium.

Looking back to Jonathan Darman’s July 11 article for Newsweek, he discussed the results of their poll taken on July 9 – 10.  Senator Obama voted in favor of the controversial FISA bill on July 9 (after having discussed his intention to do so a week earlier).  This poll revealed that the Democrat lost his 12-point lead among independent voters and fell behind McCain among independents by 7 points.  The people “sitting on the fence”, the independents, are the voters tracking Obama’s campaign moves with the most scrutiny.  They are also the voters he needs most.  This latest “flip” in favor of offshore oil drilling could have the same effect on the independent voters as his vote in favor of FISA.  Given Obama’s concern about the poll results concerning the popularity of offshore drilling, the next poll results to show the impact of his position change on this subject, particularly from the perspective of independent voters, might give him a good scare.

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