Power Struggle

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That rosier scenario would provide some temporary political relief for the White House; it won't change the President's approach. The Bush-Cheney plan is certain to focus on increasing energy production. After all, you won't find any tree huggers in the White House: just a proud Texan who sank a few wells in the oil patch and his deputy, Cheney, a Texas transplant who made millions as CEO of Halliburton. Those ties give critics plenty to latch onto as the President and the Veep stump for achieving greater capacity by opening a pristine Alaskan preserve for oil drilling and by putting a new power plant online every week for the next 20 years.

"I'm totally unimpressed with the Bush Administration's energy policy," says Gary Locke, Washington State's Democratic Governor. "We need to generate more energy, and we need to be self-sufficient, but we can't just rely on natural gas and oil exploration. We shouldn't try to dig, drill, burn and pollute our way to energy security."

Locke argues that it will take half a decade to get new energy to market. He is one of many Bush Administration critics who prefer a policy that says, "Conservation equals generation." Indeed, a report by leading scientists, three years in the making, finds that a government-led program of conservation could reduce demand anywhere from 20% to 47%. Bush's people play down the findings, arguing that they are just theoretical.

Cheney's proposal reflects the Administration's deep belief that the free market is best equipped to sort out short-term issues. "It's pretty astonishing," says a Democratic Senate staff member briefed on the general outlines of the report. "They have a fundamental belief that if you leave these energy markets alone, they'll right themselves."

That faith isn't shared by the loyal opposition. Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, an Energy Committee member, says, "I don't think the marketplace is working in a manner that gives consumers the assurance that they're not being manipulated. If you wait for the market to right itself, we'll be waiting for a long while before prices fall back into some reasonable line."

Even Republican Congressmen, who face voter wrath more frequently than Senators, are getting antsy. "People are asking us, 'What are you guys going to do about these high energy prices?'" says Oklahoma Representative J.C. Watts Jr. "High gas prices didn't happen overnight, but explaining that to voters is tough." G.O.P. Congressmen don't want to return to angry town meetings in their districts with an energy plan that lacks concrete steps to deal with high gas prices and energy brownouts. "We've got members of Congress who are freaked out over this," says a senior House G.O.P. aide.

The Bushies complain that enviros and most Democrats haven't bothered to wait for the release of the new proposal before dismissing it as a sop to Big Oil. They incessantly lambaste the Clinton Administration for neglecting the nation's long-term energy needs. And they scoff at any critic who suggests that the White House is too close to the energy sector.

Yet the protests of the Administration, say critics, ring as hollow as an empty oil drum. It consulted heavily with energy-industry lobbyists but spent little time talking to environmentalists. The Administration's last-minute rush to portray its plan as "balanced" between promoting increased domestic production and encouraging conservation--a portrayal Bush reiterated in his radio address Saturday--may come across as a public relations gesture. Even some insiders concede that conservation measures were tacked on to the plan recently in response to what one calls "arsenic and CO2," referring to the beating Bush took for his stand on several environmental issues this spring.

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham acknowledges that the new policy won't do much now, but he insists that those short-term issues will be addressed "on a separate track." His department is investigating reports that gas-station owners have been told to expect $3-a-gal. prices this summer. Those rumors, Abraham suggests, might be evidence of price gouging. "Rumors become self-fulfilling prophecies," he says.

On drilling in Alaska, Abraham does not argue that the public and Congress are ready to support the idea. But, he asks, "do we think we should take 2,000 acres of a 19 million-acre refuge that can in fact be environmentally, sensitively produced and try to build more energy independence in the U.S.? I think it's a fair debate to have."

How did we get here?

A big part of the problem has been the cost of crude, from which gasoline is refined. OPEC has cut production twice since President Bush took office--the first time in January, the second in March--by a total of 2.5 million bbl. a day. That has pushed up prices to about $28 per bbl., the high end of OPEC's target zone.