OIL PARTY POLITICS

If the consequences were not so serious, the antics of Democrats and Republicans as they try to stake out positions on the energy crisis would be amusing.

Earlier this year, as gasoline and heating oil prices soared, there were some clear battles to be fought: more funding for LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program; ending the federal government’s purchase of oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; and closing the so-called Enron loophole that allowed excessive speculation in energy markets. Maine’s Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins joined their Democratic colleagues in these fights.

With the low-hanging fruit harvested or at least in sight, the next steps were not so clear and produced some odd partisan posturing. Presidential candidates Sen. John McCain, the Republican, and Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton both advocated for a federal gas tax holiday. The proposal, which never had a serious chance of passage, has faded along with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign signs.

Now the focus is on domestic petroleum supplies, an issue over which partisans can dig in and begin some old-fashioned trench warfare. Republicans, including Sen. McCain, are in favor of more domestic drilling. Why not increase supply, they argue, which can only lower costs? The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, is a logical place to start. Next on the agenda is off-shore drilling.

Democrats, including Sen. Barack Obama, oppose the domestic drilling increase. ANWR and off-shore development would not yield a drop of oil for five to 10 years, they say; and worse, the public expectation would be that a new source of oil was in the works, thereby reducing the urgency that should be driving the search for alternative fuels.

More recently, Sen. McCain announced that as president he would offer a $300 million prize to the inventor of a car battery that costs 30 percent of the current price. Never mind that such an inventor would make billions on the technology, or that McCain, as a Republican, should trust the market to drive such innovation. When gas broke $4 a gallon, a new political arena was created.

And Sen. Obama, who has cast himself as a reformer committed to policies based on reasoning not lobbying, is closely tied to the ethanol industry, the New York Times recently reported. He advocates for more ethanol production even though diverting corn to ethanol may raise food prices by as much as 30 percent.

Expect debate on nuclear power next. Proposals to fast-track new plant applications, or at least to streamline the bureaucracy that approves such applications, could be the next battleground.

Elected federal and state officials could take a vastly different approach to this crisis by not assuming there are Democratic and Republican positions on the issues waiting to be discovered. If ever there was a need to focus on results-based action, it is now.