What has happened in the Gulf, what continues to happen, is not Barack Obama's Katrina. Nor is it anyone else's. It's not Pearl Harbor, nor is it 9-11.
What it's most comparable to, in terms of American history, is the London Blitz.
(I don't like using AP or even linking to them, but the picture on this page, by the APs Charles Riedel, is becoming the Iwa Jima Flag-on-Mount-Sirabachi moment in this disaster, so I've thumbnailed it. Historians know that an earlier group's arrival on that mountain, with a smaller flag, was the real deal to the men fighting there, and the second flag was put up for show. Yet it's that one we remember. As we'll remember Riedel's Laughing Gull. I entirely agree with AOL's Matt Mendolson on that.)
For most Americans the Gulf is distant. This can be hard to believe but it's true. Even here in Atlanta, where I live, the impacts for now are slight. My neighbor won't be heading to Destin any time soon. Beyond that life remains normal.
This is how America was during the Blitz. It was something happening elsewhere and to other people. What most today have forgotten is that, for many Americans of that time, this was highly desirable. War was highly controversial.
What President Roosevelt did, what Barack Obama needs to do, was to mold public opinion, slowly, toward a war footing. The movies which appeared and were green-lighted in 1940 were not all propaganda pieces, as they would become in the succeeding years. But many did take the gathering darkness as their subtext. And in that era, movies were the dominant medium.
Today the Internet is the dominant medium. It is a medium that is very difficult to dominate. Anything with the taint of propaganda is taken with a grain of salt. Yet, as we see time-and-time again in the Middle East, propaganda gets through.
It gets through when the target is clear and the aim is simple. The Administration's problem lies in its targeting.
The oil is not the enemy. Even BP is not the enemy. The enemy is the system that makes this eternal search for oil necessary, and that makes it the path of least resistance for BP's profit.
I'm not naive enough to think that we can flip a switch and create a world of bullet trains and windmills. But I'm unwilling to accept the inevitability of oil, and all the bloodshed and destruction that entails.
What has people down right now is just this, the idea that we have no choice but to drill and fight, fight and drill, in order to continue our way of life. That's why the President's approval ratings are down so far, I believe, because his sights are set too low.
Raising those sights means creating a political environment in which an energy bill that moves incentives decisively from carbon to renewables is seen as patriotic, as a jobs bill, and as simple common sense, so that any opposition is seen as unpatriotic. In the face of Big Oil the President has been acting as Chamberlain at Munich, pushing back slowly hoping for "peace in our time."
He needs to become Churchill, not against BP but against the system that made this disaster inevitable.
The best ads being done on this disaster, from a political perspective, are being done by the group VoteVets. But no ad from an outside group will, by itself, get the job done here.
The President needs to convene a New Energy Summit. Bring in John Doerr, bring in Al Gore. Do some dog-and-ponies on what is being done, emphasizing the hiring going on all around the country. Get a serious speech together, with California's help, on how fast we can move with what incentives, and make some choices there.
Then get some of the New Energy VCs and entrepreneurs out in public. Not the President looking at a wind farm, but local reporters talking to local businessmen and scientists who are researching solutions.
There is enormous opportunity, still, in insulation, in technology that limits the energy use of producing and transporting all kinds of goods. Every dollar saved is a dollar that can be turned into hiring.
Set a declaration at the Summit, a push for a New Energy Bill, and make that the issue in the midterms. Make that your declaration of war. Have your party stand for something that businessmen stand for, even some businessmen in Houston. This bill must be budget-neutral, and it can easily be. Because every dollar of incentive for New Energy can be taken from Old Energy, in the same bill.
We also need Hollywood involved. We can do stories, exciting stories, about New Energy. We can do it on cable, we can do it on TV, and we can do it in the movies, too. But someone has to quietly encourage those stories. There are plenty of producers and directors who would gladly enlist in that effort, but they need to be enlisted. You have to ask for their help and given them their orders.
Slowly, gradually, anything that supports the oil economy, anything that supports the coal economy, needs to be seen as Old, as 20th century. All the stuff that's written about on sites like Smartplanet needs to be pursued, and highlighted, and become part of the daily news digest. Not just the back of the newscast, not just the business highlights, but the front, the top of the newscast.
All this can be done. It is mainly an effort of will. The time to do it is now.
Declare war on oil before something like Pearl Harbor or 9-11 forces it on us.
