Stealing Dubya's Lines

Didja ever think you'd see the day?:

The 2007 State of the Union address, I believe, was the occasion when President Bush coined the phrase "addicted to oil" in the service of selling the chowderheaded notion of "growing our energy," which has done nothing to augment our domestic energy resources but has definitely fueled higher food prices.  You knew that some Dem would pick up on that dubious addition to the political lexicon sooner or later, and Lucifer didn't disappoint.

While it was a stupid thing for Bush to say, Obama's parroting of it reveals his stupidity.  America is "addicted to oil" like human beings are "addicted to oxygen".  Nobody ever talks about the need to find "alternative breathing sources"; the air is the air.  Not entirely dissimilarly, petroleum is the lifeblood of the global, and certainly American, economy, and will be for the forseeable future.  Ethanol costs more to transport than it's worth, because it can't be pumped through pipelines and therefore has to be trucked.  Windmills don't generate much energy at all, and until the advent of weather control technology are at the mercy of nature.  Hybrid cars are inefficient, underpowered, and have no room for the three hundred mile extension cords.  Solar is impractical until a way is devised to efficiently capture and store it.  Nuclear will help (even Europe is way ahead of us there), but it won't remotely eliminate the need for the continued flow of oil at market prices.

Given the deliterious effect of self-imposed scarcity on those market prices, it is unconscionable for any pol, much less a man who arrogantly presumes to be qualified to lead the Free World, to do anything short of maximizing the availability of domestic sources of petroleum.  Even global warming hoaxer Lord Queeg is bending to some degree on expanding domestic drilling where the oil actually is.  But not False Messiah!  His answer is no energy exploration at all, and a George McGovernesque thousand dollar check to every "non-wealthy" American sucked straight out of the exploration budget of every oil company in the country.  Or about nineteen tanks of gas at the current price for regular unleaded if you drive an economy car.  Yeah, THAT'll solve the energy crisis people like him spent the past thirty years perpetrating.

Still, if it's the difference between the politics of scarcity and the politics of abundance that most defines the two parties, how can it be that St. Barack is the prohibitive favorite to win in November?  Was Jimmy "Malaise" Carter unlucky enough to be thirty years ahead of his time?