Could McCain Adopt Gore's Energy Plan?

Sometimes it is good to provoke an unconventional thought. I'm wondering whether Al Gore's energy speech, which Senator Obama has not yet fully embraced, could be picked up by Senator McCain to upset the curious balance between the two candidates and secure the win in November.

Let me start at the beginning. In his path-breaking address yesterday, Al Gore shook loose the bonds of political gravity and finally proposed a key element of any new American grand strategy: 100% carbon-free electricty by 2018.

Saying "100%" about anything in the context of sustainability in America is nearly impossible in Washington, but the former Vice President seems to understand what McCain and Obama have yet to fully grasp: the nation is hungry for a decisive, bold step towards a new economic engine for the United States.

It's not just my opinion. E.J. Dionne, writing today in the Washington Post quotes polling from Democracy Corps that says the Democrats just do not have a "compelling narrative" on the energy issue. Look closely at Carville and Greenberg's polling analysis and you see the prize at stake here:

...With nearly 80 percent saying the country is off track, voters are paying a lot of attention to the issues impacting their lives and the country’s future, and they are paying a lot of attention to the qualities of the candidates.

The cornerstone of our next economic engine is going to be a carbon-free energy system. It's not really a political issue, it's technical. Al Gore just tossed both McCain and Obama the blueprint, but will either be able to pick it up?

I think McCain has a real opportunity to surprise the country. As long as Obama sticks with his less-than-decisive energy policy, which, the same Democracy Corps analysis reports, is not winning over American minds anyway, the only thing holding McCain back from embracing a radically-new energy economy is inertia.

Certainly it's not ideology. That's because there is both a neoconservative and a free-market argument for a massive economic transformation rooted in energy. From the neocon perspective, the faster the United States makes the shift to renewable energy, the sooner the illiberal states of the Middle East lose their leverage over U.S. policy in the region. Electricity is not the biggest part of this, oil is, but as I've said many times over the last five years, we already have a plan to get off oil as a transportation fuel. Jim Woolsey and Andrew Marshall would be thrilled.

From the free-market perspective, Gore's approach of a tax-shift instead of cap-and-trade puts the market, not the government, in the driver's seat when it comes to picking the technologies and products that get us to carbon neutral energy. Cap-and-trade, with its easy Congressional carve-outs, gives Congress an incredible ability to protect pet industries--exactly the kind of market-distorting behavior that got us here in the first place. Of course, which candidate would not love to promise all Americans a major new cut in their income tax?

Obama should be thinking seriously about waiting too long to embrace this call for 100% in 10 years. America wants bold, decisive leadership in taking us to a new direction for the nation as a whole. McCain is a neoconservative, a free marketer, but mostly a maverick who understands capturing the new center of the American political spectrum wins the Oval Office.