This article in USA Today is pretty good at summarizing my views, though the article focuses too much on energy policy and not enough on foreign policy for my liking.
I'm for McCain, but not the GOPThe Republicans go awry and disgrace conservatism when it comes to Big Oil.
By Ralph Peters
I support John McCain for president. But that doesn't mean I support the Republican Party. Had the GOP nominated anyone else this year, I'd be struggling to rationalize a vote for the Democrats in November. I back McCain because we need integrity, experience and courage in our next president. I view the Democrats' candidate, Barack Obama, as a Ferrari without an engine, wonderfully shiny but with nothing under the hood.
(Illustration by Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY)
Even so like many Americans I'm disgusted with both political parties. The Republicans have abandoned their principles while the Democrats have abandoned their senses. I believe that the Republicans get it right more often on foreign policy and security while the Democrats show more decency on domestic matters. Were it not for their alarming weakness on defense, I'd lean toward the Democrats now not least because of the Republican Party's slavish relationship with the energy industry.
Among swing voters who'll decide this year's election I'm not alone in my disgust. As the fuel-cost crisis brakes our economy and plays havoc with family budgets, the Republican Party is determined to reward the very corporations that created this situation. Although it was in part a political stunt, the recent effort by congressional Democrats to hold energy companies responsible for the markets they dominate and to restrict unwarranted subsidies to Big Oil resonated with me.
Exploiting ANWR
Our longstanding avoidance of a responsible energy policy is, of course, a bipartisan disgrace. That said, the Bush administration has been, first and foremost, an oilman's administration. I'm infuriated by the Republicans' Manchurian-candidate response to every complaint about Big Oil's culpability in this energy crisis: "Drill ANWR!" Just open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for exploitation.
This is as dishonest as money politics gets. First, it would take a decade, at least, to get ANWR oil flowing. Second, we'd get at most a two-year-equivalent supply out of a ravaged wilderness. Third, current laws would allow Big Oil to sell ANWR petroleum on the global market it could go into Chinese tanks as easily as into our own.
But the even bigger scandal behind the "Drill ANWR!" mantra is that this administration has already issued a deluge of oil-and-gas development leases on public lands. According to the Interior Department numbers, industry already has the rights to 44 million acres. There aren't enough drilling rigs, heavy-equipment pools or operators to begin to cover the territory already given away.
The oil and gas companies are getting all the papers signed that they can before a new administration takes office. Such leases are virtually impossible to revoke. Wherever they don't have the gear to drill or pipelines in place, those companies quickly carve roads across virgin lands: Once the roads are in, the ecological damage is underway, and there's no reverse gear.
You don't hear much about this scandal because legislators from both parties back the giveaways (just follow the money). From New Mexico, up along the western slope of the Rockies, through Wyoming and Montana, our natural heritage is being ravaged for the future profits of the same corporations gouging American consumers today and that land is your land.
I can't understand why conservatives aren't for conservation. You don't have to be an Al Gore acolyte to value America's landscape. We all should seek to be good stewards of the environment. How did the party of Teddy Roosevelt become the party of Bush-Cheney?
This isn't about global-warming hysteria. This is just about being responsible citizens who do the right thing by our natural heritage and by one another. Clean air and a clean conscience make a pretty good platform.
Compromise needed
Yes, we need to make intelligent compromises. We need energy. Even so, industry must be accountable. We need new refineries, but Big Oil refrains from serious efforts to build them because limited refinery capacity is a handy excuse for maintaining high gas prices when they otherwise would fall. Offshore drilling coordinated with the states, as McCain proposes makes sense, but energy developers want to drill closer in because it's cheaper (kiss your beach goodbye). And yes, Virginia, there is clean coal-burning technology (developed at taxpayer expense), but power providers refuse to build non-polluting plants because of the set-up costs.
Instead, we're told by march-in-step legislators that the only way to fix our energy woes is to sign over America's remaining wilderness to oil and gas multinationals. This is a lie so big that it echoes from the Rockies to the Arctic Circle.
That's one more reason why I back McCain for president: He opposes the Republican establishment's eagerness to sign off on the wanton destruction of ANWR. He has the guts to take on Big Energy. He wants to reward innovators, not price-gougers. He has the honesty to state that non-polluting nuclear power will be part of the answer. He believes in sensible, sturdy conservation policies that balance our needs and our legacy. An outdoorsman from Arizona, McCain has long stood apart from his party in his defense of conservation measures, while Obama, from Southside Chicago, discovered environmentalism only when a national campaign made it convenient to be green.
What else do I want in the next administration? A foreign policy that recognizes we really do have mortal enemies who must be resisted. A domestic policy that doesn't kneel to extremists on either end of the political spectrum. The reduction of pork-barrel spending, government waste and the deficit. And the recognition that capitalism is by far the best system but that capitalism needs adult supervision.
I don't trust either party to deliver. But I trust John McCain.
Ralph Peters' new book, Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World, will be published next week. He is a member of USA TODAY'S board of contributors.
