Have we mentioned lately how much we like offshore drilling?
Lots more than you might have remembered -- that's how much all of us here at All Things Obama like offshore drilling. If we haven't managed to work our positive feelings about offshore drilling into the conversation over the past few months (or even the past few years), we hope you'll forgive us.
It must have just slipped our mind, with all the excitement about Barack Obama running for the White House, and then actually winning the White House. There were so many other exciting Barack Obama topics to talk about, we just never got around to sharing our feelings about this one particular issue.
These are our feelings: We think it's a swell idea.
To be perfectly honest about it, if you'd asked us about offshore drilling a couple of years ago -- or even a couple of days ago -- we probably wouldn't have been able to put our positive feelings into words. At least, not into words that most people would have heard as truly positive. The words that most likely would have stood out -- to most people, anyway -- would have been the words about oil spills, or the hazards to precious wildlife, or the risk of polluting beautiful beaches, or even the threat of permanent environmental damage.
And we probably would have said a few words that sounded particularly churlish about the kind of energy policy you get when you put two former energy execs -- those would have been George Bush and Dick Cheney, of course -- in charge of things. Of course Bush and Cheney want to drill, we might have said. They always want to drill.
Anyway, that's how most people would have interpreted our comments a couple of years ago -- or even a couple of days ago.
Which is why we're taking this opportunity to clarify our thinking. To let you know that deep down inside, we're really OK with offshore drilling -- even expanded offshore drilling -- and that we've been really OK with it since at least Wednesday afternoon, which just happens to be when we heard that Barack Obama was OK with it.
Were we caught off guard when the president made his announcement? Maybe a little bit. Some of us here at All Things Obama had somehow been under the impression that the president had a somewhat different view of the matter, and that his view on expanded offshore drilling could best be summed up as follows: No way. No how.
Accordingly, some of us had adopted a quite similar view, and we were only too happy to point out the many dangers, and the minimal benefits, that expanded offshore drilling would produce.
But once the president clarified his thinking -- that is, once the president announced on Wednesday that he wanted to go ahead with expanded offshore drilling -- we were only too happy to point out what a wonderful thing this would be.
We're also happy to point out how carefully nuanced and deeply reasoned the president's decision was -- not to mention how judicious it was, and even how politically savvy it was.
All in all, in fact, we have no hesitation in saying that Barack Obama made exactly the right decision, for exactly the right reasons, and that we're totally on board -- unless, of course, he should decide to change his mind, in which case that will be exactly the right decision, for exactly the right reasons.
We await further instructions.
Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.