Red, Green, and Blue

Energy didn’t get a sniff in last night’s Obama press conference. That wasn’t really a surprise given the way that health care has elbowed its way into the political spotlight. You can count climate change among the “priorities” now in the shadows. Health care is all touch-and-feel…it plays with everyone.

Climate change? Not so much. If Jon Stewart is snoozing, we know that the rest of America - a goodly percentage of which is far across the spectrum from Stewart and outwardly hostile to climate change arguments - is tuned all the way out. That is partly because climate change, energy and the environment still are considered Birkenstock and granola issues. The Obama operatives that are still engaged on climate change have finally started to tweak the message in a way that might help sell a bill even to science skeptics and the generally apathetic.

Messaging is a start, but they will also need to tweak the policy. After all his arm-twisting on the F-22s, Sotomayor, health care, and the stimulus, Obama has precious little political capital to bring reluctant Senate Blue Dog Dems or GOPs over to support of comprehensive climate change legislation (whether one can put the husk of Waxman-Markey that passed the House in that category is another question).

With no soft power left, Obama will need to combine a new message with new concessions, and this is his best formula:

Make the National Security Case for Energy Reform

The administration has the right allies to rescue climate change from consignment to the eco-liberal scrap heap. Bill O’Reilly might not be buying it, but credible voices on the national security implications of energy reform are out there, ranging from former Senator Warner to a slew of retired Admirals and Generals, to long-time security apparatchiks like Jim Woolsey. Its a steep climb, but this shift in tone is a good start.

If Obama could make this a hardcore national security issue it would be galvanizing. The drawback for the White House is that this opens up the question of domestic drilling and it remains an open question whether Obama is willing to compromise there. He should…if he wants this badly enough.

Take Trade and Tariffs Off the Table

The “border adjustments” that House Dems threw into that legendary last 300 pages of Waxman-Markey are giving opponents another “real” issue to leverage in the policy debate. The bill had some nuanced non-tariff trade issues already, but the amendments add tariffs to non-carbon-capped importers’ goods, purportedly to control carbon leakage and protect American competitiveness.

That may or may not fly in the context of the inevitable WTO/NAFTA grievance, but the free-traders on the right look at the measures as the second coming of Smoot-Hawley. So, take it out: it hurts domestically and it probably only gets in the way in Copenhagen anyway.

Tap real GOP interests

National security is one political issue where Obama might be able to swing support, but there are tangible issues to leverage that could help bring some specific GOP interests on board for a big climate change bill.

Critics already see too much of a role in the cap-and-trade regime for Wall Street, and Rush Limbaugh and others were quick to point in that direction in explaining why Waxman-Markey won support from three New Jersey GOP congressmen. Obama should continue to leverage the natural connections with right-leaning stakeholders like Wall Street. But, New Jersey’s day traders aren’t the only possibly (the state won’t be quite as helpful in the context of the Senate anyway). Other red states could be targets.

Broader domestic drilling rights might entice support from the Gulf states and Alaska, where you are currently looking at a wipe out that even loses some Democratic members. As the tote board seems to indicate now, broader drilling would engage at least seven near-certain “NO” votes, including bringing Dems Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Begitch of Alaska back into the fold.

Even scarlet red states like Wyoming are seeing the “green” writing on the wall. In the Waxman-Markey bill, “green tech” is king, and the ability to roll clean coal in under that rubric helped swing votes from the industrial midwest and southeast. There is no reason a good climate bill cannot also embrace the aspirations that wind-beaten states have of turning turbines to create dollars. Wyoming, Oklahoma, Montana and even Texas come to the table under the right conditions and then you have another seven certain “NO” votes talking.

Obama himself is responsible for a lot of the pressure his agenda faces right now. Trying to cram cap-and-trade, health care, a SCOTUS nominee, and stimulus spending through the legislature is challenging enough. Now tack on his self-imposed fall 2009 deadline for all of it. Each day brings us closer to the 2010 mid-terms and makes it less likely that someone is going to make a risky vote.

The science says we’re at a tipping point, there is a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate until the end of the session, Copenhagen is just five months away. If Obama wants policy reform, now is the time to take these three steps. His political courage today will dictate whether tomorrow’s environment will benefit from an abandonment of yesterday’s energy consumption habits.

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