Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was clear: There will be no oil drilling off our coast.
The governor's opposition came last week, the day President Bush urged Congress to lift the federal ban on offshore gas and oil drilling. The idea, advocates say, is to increase domestic supplies and reduce our dependence on counties run by people who, to put it mildly, don't always have the best interests of the United States at heart.
Offshore oil drilling has been a third rail for California politicians, certainly since the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, when an oil platform off the coast blew out, spilling some 200,000 gallons of crude oil. And, although far away and under completely different circumstances, the Exxon Valdez tanker oil spill 20 years later off the Alaskan coast dumped 10.8 million gallons into Prudhoe Bay, reinforcing the mind-set of many state residents against ocean drilling.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, speaking in Houston last week, urged offshore drilling but continued to oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Democrat Barack Obama, McCain's presumed opponent in the November general election, opposes more drilling offshore and in ANWR.
If this smells like political posturing, you've picked up the right scent.
All this talk of new domestic supplies at a time of a presidential election and $4.50-plus per gallon gasoline sounds good. But even the most ardent advocates of more offshore drilling say it will take years to develop the supplies.
Still, politics being politics, there is a tendency to tap into voter frustration. And voters certainly are frustrated.
Just 17 percent of Americans sampled in an AP-Ipsos poll out last week say the country is going in the right direction. For many Americans, the right direction - at least part of it - would be toward lower gas prices.
It is disappointing, of course, that Bush squandered his chance. He enjoyed a majority in Congress for his first six years in office, and especially in those days just after 9/11, when he basked in huge approval ratings, he could have pushed through a comprehensive energy policy.
That was then, and this is now.
Now we must understand that it is silly to believe a wholesale opening of our domestic reserves will bring relief at the pump anytime soon, if ever.
This editorial first appeared in the Stockton Record June 22.
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