Energizing the New Narrative

On energy, I'm fervently hoping that Obama will be No Drama -- removing the emotion from our energy policy, and starting us down a sensible path toward energy efficiency, greenhouse-gas legislation, alternative energy and a general feeling of empowerment. His pick of Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Nobel Prize winner Steve Chu for the Department of Energy is a good sign. Chu is famous for using physics equations to make decisions -- and in the context of energy, that'll be a radical move. Americans' one thought about energy is a fever dream of "cheap gas" at any cost, which has led to everything from crazy corn ethanol subsidies, to spending tens of billions policing the world's oil shipping lanes, to getting involved in pipelines as far away as Azerbaijan, Peru and Chad, and this horrible war in Iraq. Making mature, rational plans about energy would be a great improvement.

But then, it strikes me that nothing says more about the depressing failures of the last decades than my hope that the next president acts like a grown-up. The bar has fallen pretty low, hasn't it?

So here is my deeper hope, the one I'm almost afraid to say in public for fear of jinxing it: I hope Obama helps Americans tell ourselves a new story about our future, one where all of us have the power to make the world a better place. I'm tired of hearing Americans of all political stripes say that our best days are behind us before we lost (check one): the empire, the manufacturing jobs to China, the Iraq War, the housing and credit bubble, the Vietnam War, control of the world's oil, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the nuclear family, the nuclear option, the Founding Fathers, the counterculture, the New Deal, punk rock, respect for our elders, etc. It's lazy thinking -- this idea that our future is entirely determined by the vacuum caused by what's "gone." Obama's autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," suggests he has the ability to bring us together with a new story about the best of our past and the future we can create. But of course, making that story come true will require a lot of us acting like grown-ups.