Energy and anti-intellectualism

After over a week out of town, I’m pretty much caught up on the news now (except the Daily Show…). Energy has become a front-and-center issue, which is a good thing regardless of who wins. Unfortunately, the McCain campaign has been taken over by the kids from the playground.

The celebrity ad got McCain a lot of press: juxtaposing Britney Spears and Paris Hilton with Barack Obama offends the intellect on so many levels I’m at a loss for words. Even McCain’s mother said “I think it’s kinda stupid”. I can’t imagine what I’d have to do for my mother to publicly describe it as “kinda stupid”…

Soon after, someone at a McCain event asked him about the ad, specifically with respect to his earlier talk about respectful campaigning, and McCain said “We’re proud of that commercial”:

I don’t mind negative campaigning, but there was no substance in that ad… McCain has to know that.

And then there was tire inflation…
Time magazine crunched the numbers from experts and the Bush administration and came to the conclusion:

The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points.

McCain mocked the idea and characterized it as the entirety of Obama’s energy plan, here’s Obama’s response, which I think is concise and clear:

The open mockery among conservatives of something that would actually work isn’t as surprising as I wish it were. This is the gas tax “holiday” all over again. McCain is picking what polls well instead of what actually works well (unintuitively).

I think there’s a lot of value in bringing up practical issues like this in the campaign. I didn’t know that tire pressure had that much of an effect on gas mileage, though I knew it had some. Now I’d like to keep a closer eye on mine. Presidents should ask us to help out in causes of national importance. Bush just asks us to go shopping and gives out war-time tax cuts… it’s pretty ridiculous.

The democrats have a good roundup of McCain’s transformation:

And finally, Paris Hilton’s reply to the McCain ad, which was partly funny:

Steve Benen:

watching the Hilton video, a few questions came to mind. First, why is that Paris Hilton’s fake ad includes more substantive talk about energy policy than John McCain’s real ad? Second, if writers helped Hilton with her script, and writers helped McCain with his script, why is it that Hilton seems to have a better grasp on policy details than McCain does? Shouldn’t that be, you know, the other way around?

Indeed…

That’s enough outrage for now, I’m tired.