Obama’s schizophrenic energy policy

The president is exhorting foreign oil producers to boost output, and the U.S. government has provided taxpayer-subsidized loans and guarantees to promote production in Brazil and Colombia. Yet, here at home, he is doing his level best to restrict drilling and exploration. Dan Kish at the Institute for Energy Research is baffled:

“The President now says his administration is pushing major oil producers to increase oil output in an effort to lower prices. What he really needs is to have someone tell the government of the world’s 3rd largest oil producer to boost output. In case he is unaware, that oil producer is the United States.”

“He could do that at his next cabinet meeting by telling EPA to stop holding up Shell’s drilling in Alaska and by telling Secretary Salazar to stop closing access to our nation’s energy supplies, which the Congressional Research Service says are larger than any country on earth.”

My guess is that the Complex-Thinker-in-Chief has gotten the results that he wanted – higher gas prices and a pretext for pushing commercially non-viable and hopelessly inadequate renewable energy alternatives – but is inexplicably stunned by the fact that the citizenry is up in arms about paying $80 or more for a tank of gasoline, and that this is translating into some very bad polling that could carry over to the 2012 election. Well, what did he think was going to happen? A boom in the bicycle market? A stampede to buy Chevy Volts? Or perhaps he figured we’d all be willing to slog off to the grocery store on foot, pushing wheel-barrows, glad for the chance to get some exercise, and grateful that our President has given the dunes sagebrush lizard a new lease on life.

There has been much discussion on the right about whether Obama is a committed socialist ideologue or just a clueless, prickly, not extraordinarily intelligent and rather lazy narcissist. I continue to maintain that there’s no reason he can’t be both.

(H/T: John at Powerline)