The energy of the U.S. and the energy of Bush

U.S. President George W. Bush was compared, and not for the first time, to Richard Nixon earlier this week. As Bush prepared to give his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night, his support in the polls continued to drop. Since Nixon's 1974 address, there has not been a president who appeared before Congress in such a weak political situation.

But there is another Nixon comparison, an instructive one, that has evaded analysts. Just as Bush did Tuesday night, like other presidents in the past, Nixon asked in 1974 that America's dependence on foreign oil - that is, primarily Arab oil - be reduced.

Today there is a war on global terror. When Nixon gave his speech, the oil embargo was at its peak, and he told Congress: "Irrespective of the possibility of restoring the flow of Middle East oil, we must act now to ensure that we are never again dependent on foreign sources of supply for our energy needs. We must continue to slow the rise in our rate of consumption."

And this is what Bush had to say in his address: "For too long our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes and to terrorists... It is in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply - and the way forward is through technology."

How similar Bush's message is to Nixon's, how similar are the reasons. Another 30 years will tell if the failure is also similar.

In any case, oil consumption has gone nowhere but up, and dependence on foreign sources has increased since Nixon's 1974 speech.

"America's current oil policy is inconsistent with the hallmark of the Bush administration's foreign policy," Gal Luft, an expert in the field and the executive director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, told Congress a year ago. It is oil income that funds anti-democratic regimes and societies. In effect, said Luft, the United States uses one hand to fund those who cultivate terror, and uses the other hand to fight terrorists.

Bush proposed ambitious goals showing that his administration understands the significance of the hour at hand. Reducing dependence on foreign oil is one of the decisive strategic objectives for America's future. It's not easy to convince the public when the subject is as complex, technical and long term as this one. But several parallel trends will help Bush try to reach the goal that his predecessors couldn't. These trends include rising oil prices, which are expected to continue going up as the two ascendant powers, China and India, increase their consumption; improved alternatives; and a strange coalition of hawks who see oil as an important strategic issue and environmentalists who support whatever they think will block the spread of global warming.

Therefore, some say the conditions are ripe for the beginning of change whose significance it is difficult to exaggerate. Democratic leaders understand the importance of such a change no less than Bush does, and would have a hard time explaining their opposition to reasonable steps like the ones he proposed. True, they will say that it's not enough - certainly not enough to prevent former vice president Al Gore's climatological nightmare from coming true - and that's true. Bush isn't worried by global warming, but by the heating up of the oil front and its ramifications for national security.

Those who are worried about the same thing and focus on the challenges of the Middle East should take some time reviewing one of the most important parts of the speech, in which Bush asked Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Nixon comparison comes up once again: In Nixon's time, it was a war in the Middle East that led to the shortage - and that is precisely the kind of shortage that Bush wants to prevent while he can. It appears that he does not assume that the era of war is over. The oil countries - Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria - are not countries that guarantee long-term stability.

Bush's speech, therefore, could turn out to be an important one, but that will not necessarily be the case. Bush gave the speech while battered and drained. The energy market needs this shake up, but it's not clear if the president still has the political energy to set such major processes in motion. In any case. every sentence Bush uttered Tuesday that wasn't about Iraq was considered an attempt to distract the public from what is most important - as though such a powerful country can deal with only one issue at a time, and as though the world can wait until the war over Baghdad ends, in either victory or defeat.