Reading this Tom Friedman column that the Obama campaign is circulating you realize again how the politics of the gas tax issue could really favor Obama if he plays it right. (See yesterday's post for more on that.) These two passages in particular:
The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”
Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering. ...
The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.
Obama has been double-teamed by Clinton and McCain for over two months now. But there's an upside to getting hit by two people at once: it allows you to tie them together in unflattering ways. The gas tax debate in particular is a great opportunity to portray them as what's wrong with Washington (which he's doing). It probably wouldn't hurt if, a la Friedman, he started referring to it as the "McCain-Clinton" proposal.
Update: Don't sleep on the bonus Al Gore angle. The super-est superdelegate of all can't be too pleased with Hillary's pandering here. Something tells me Obama's won some brownie points on this one.
--Noam Scheiber