The Education of George W. Bush

"'Drill!' 'Oil!' 'Gas!' 'More!'

"In his oil-patch zeal, Cheney sounded more chairman of Halliburton than vice president of the United States. The country has moved on to a debate about how to reduce carbon emissions to slow global warming. Domestic oil drilling would do little if anything to ease gas prices in the short term and, even in the long term, wouldn't reverse the growing supply/demand imbalance as emerging economies devour dwindling reserves.

"But Cheney needn't worry about sounding tone-deaf. It merely provides Bush more job security."

A New Tall Tale

Erika Bolstad and Kevin G. Hall write for McClatchy Newspapers: "As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an unusual argument keeps surfacing in support of drilling off the U.S. coastline and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases?"

Except it's not true.

"'China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period,' said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico."

But surprise, surprise: "Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Wednesday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, picked up the refrain. Cheney quoted a column by George Will. . . .

"In his speech, Cheney described the Chinese as being 'in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to higher prices means more supply.'"

Twilight Watch

In the meantime, Cheney is clearly alarmed at the possibility that all his work will be rolled back by a Democratic president. At yesterday's event, he indicated that he doesn't intend to go down without a fight.

Asked what he considered the most important achievement of the past seven years, he replied; "I would point to what we've done with respect to the global war on terror. . . . [I]t is not an accident that it's been now nearly seven years since 9/11 and we haven't been hit again."

And he spoke of how important is it that "we do whatever's necessary to defend the American people here at home. We can do it. We've proved it now for the last seven years and the next government, both the legislative and executive branches will be tested in terms of whether or not they're willing to continue on that vein or buy into the proposition that somehow we ought to dismantle it all and that we shouldn't be doing what we're doing. I think we did exactly the right thing and I plan to do everything I can to defend it."