Democratic Candidates On Energy

So, though I like Barack Obama's charisma and that he seems to be a man of ideas, I decided to look at where he and other leading Democratic presidential candidates stand on issues I care about. It was an interesting journey around the web.

I looked at four sites, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. In my opinion these are the four that have an actual shot at the nomination.

One of my big issues this election will be energy policy. I feel that it's a huge issue on the economic and national security fronts.

I was able to find statements on the energy issue easily at Obama, Edwards, and Biden's sites. It was pretty simple. They all had a navigational element labeled "issues" I could click to see where they stood on a variety of important issues. Oddly enough, there wasn't one on Hillary's site. In fact, despite about 5 minutes clicking around, I could not find out where she stood on energy policy. I finally found it on a second visit when I checked her videos area. Rather than write out her policies, Hillary is talking-heading them. Nice if you like to sit and watch videos, but annoying if you read fast and don't want to wait 5-10 minutes to get through it. She needs an "issues" section where she posts transcripts of her videos.

Now I can pick apart what I do and don't like about each candidate's position in detail, but I'll just give capsules.

Edwards: He wants to reduce our projected 2025 oil imports by 33%. That's 16 years (from when he takes office) for a 1/3 reduction. Too long to do too little.

Obama: Ever the senator from a coal and farm state, a big chunk of his plan is clean-burning fuel from "Illinois coal" and biomass produced fuels like biodiesel and ethanol. Feel's like he's a little too intent on what's good for the Midwest and not what's best for America as a whole.

Clinton: She hit the right words, saying she wants an "Apollo Program" for energy. But her plan to fund it only allocates 50 billion over 10 years. Less than 1/2 of what we're spending in one year on waging foreign wars would be spread out over 10 years. The annual budget of the "Apollo Program" for energy would be less than 1/3 of NASA's 2007 budget (not including supplemental funds for Katrina recovery). If you want to call it an "Apollo Program", Hillary, fund it like one.

Biden: In the shortest of all position statements, he just parrots the others... biofuels, fuel efficiency, renewable energy, investment... but doesn't actually give details on how he plans to do it.

It seems the Democratic candidates need glasses, because none of them has a clear vision for an aggressive, effective plan to improve our energy footing.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Dangerous Thoughts, Politics & Religion.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.