The Obama campaign is doubling down on the ridiculous business about inflating America’s tires, claiming that “every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent.” How absurd He says of his opponents: “it’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.” (Probably those bitter clingers.) And here’s TIME Magazine carrying water:

the Republican National Committee is sending tire gauges labeled “Barack Obama’s Energy Plan” to Washington reporters.

But who’s really out of touch? 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. In other words: Obama is right.

In fact, Obama’s actual energy plan is much more than a tire gauge. But that’s not what’s so pernicious about the tire-gauge attacks. Politics ain’t beanbag, and Obama has defended himself against worse smears. The real problem with the attacks on his tire-gauge plan is that efforts to improve conservation and efficiency happen to be the best approaches to dealing with the energy crisis — the cheapest, cleanest, quickest and easiest ways to ease our addiction to oil, reduce our pain at the pump and address global warming.

Even dumbing down has been dumbed down. (And Time ought to try getting its statistics right on how much incremental oil can be produced in America — at least 1-2 million bpd can be added over the medium term.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Democrats, General, MSM, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.