The Note: Gassing Up

August 5, 2008 -- When is the flop less dangerous than the flip? (When it costs $75 to fill up your Jeep.)

Who knows better than Bill Clinton what it takes to be a president? (Nobody -- which is why evasion is interesting.)

What beats 200,000 screaming Germans? (Maybe 50,000 roaring Harleys -- but were their tires inflated?)

What did Sen. Barack Obama really want for his birthday? (Hint -- John Kerry knows, though Obama could have done without Kerry's decision to label Sen. John McCain as "dangerous.")

It's energy week on the trail, and a second policy shift by Sen. Barack Obama hardly registers as a surprise. Both candidates are following the voters here -- and they realize that there's more peril in standing firm than in allowing a touch of policy flexibility into your thinking.

In the process, might conventional wisdom be shifting? Should we still be certain that sky-high gas prices will be a drag on Sen. John McCain -- guilty by association with an oil-soaked GOP?

A party looking for a new brand may be finding one with its new standard-bearer, along with an energized congressional contingent that's found a winner, and a prop the GOP and its allies are quickly learning to love.

McCain, R-Ariz., visits a nuclear power plant outside Detroit on Tuesday -- finding another area of distinction with Obama, D-Ill., on energy policy; Obama has two energy town halls in Ohio (and brings a new, sharper message).

"Energy has become a pivotal issue in this increasingly competitive election, as voters fret over high gas prices, which have hovered around $4 a gallon, and their impact on food and transportation costs," Amy Chozick and Elizabeth Holmes write in The Wall Street Journal. "Sen. McCain has successfully seized on the issue to gain ground against Sen. Obama, who continues to lead in most polls."

Obama is adjusting mid-course -- and he's fortunate that this is a story about energy, not about flip-flopping: "Obama's proposal includes two reversals of positions he has taken in the past: He had fought the idea of limited new offshore drilling and was against tapping the nation's emergency oil stockpile to relieve gasoline prices that have stubbornly hovered around $4 a gallon," per USA Today's write-up.

"With the politics of energy shifting as rapidly as gasoline prices, Democrats, led by presidential candidate Barack Obama, are retreating from long-held positions and scrambling to offer distressed voters more immediate relief from spiraling costs," Peter Nicholas and Janet Hook write in the Los Angeles Times.

"Those shifts by Obama are indicative of the pressure that politicians of both parties -- but especially Democrats -- are under to develop specific, short-term energy proposals in the face of rising costs," they continue. "Against that backdrop, politicians risk looking insensitive if they tout only solutions that could take years to hit the pump, such as Obama's plan to develop hybrid cars that can travel 150 miles on a gallon of gasoline."

"His campaign insists the moves demonstrate his pragmatism, but Republicans say the Illinois senator is merely following the polls," Russell Berman writes in the New York Sun. (Are some polls worth following?)

McCain has found a groove -- and with those tire gauges already scattered wide, remember that no one can push a message (or make a quote famous) quite like a united Republican Party.

Said McCain (pithy enough to make this quote memorable): "We have to drill here and drill now," he said, pressing Obama to call on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to bring Congress back into session to address gas prices, per ABC's Ron Claiborne and Bret Hovell.

But who's the insider? "When Senator McCain talks about the failure of politicians in Washington to do anything about our energy crisis, it's important to remember that he's been a part of that failure," Obama said, ABC's Sunlen Miller reports.

From Obama's prepared remarks, for his event in Youngstown, Ohio, Tuesday morning: "While Senator McCain's plan won't save you at the pump anytime soon, it sure has done a lot to raise campaign dollars. Senator McCain raised more than one million dollars from the oil industry just last month, most of which came after he announced his plan for offshore drilling to a room full of cheering oil executives."

He plans to continue: "So to sum up, under Senator McCain's plan, the oil companies get billions more, we don't pay any less at the pump, and we stay in the same cycle of dependence on oil that got us into this crisis. The oil companies have placed their bet on Senator McCain, and if he wins, they will continue to cash in while our families and our economy suffer and our future is put in jeopardy."

From the Obama attack ad, per ABC's Jake Tapper: "John McCain. He's been in Washington for 26 years. And as gas prices soared and dependence on oil exploded, McCain was voting against alternative energy, against higher mileage standards. Barack Obama. He'll make energy independence an urgent national priority, raise mileage standards, fast-track technology for alternative fuels. A thousand dollar tax cut to help families as we break the grip of foreign oil. A real plan, and new energy."

As for the tire gauges: "Want to measure the progress of the presidential campaign? Look no further than the tire-pressure gauges handed out on John McCain's campaign plane Monday morning," the Journal's Elizabeth Holmes writes. "The gag just keeps going. The McCain campaign used it as a fund-raising tool as well, asking supporters to put 'Senator Obama's "tire gauge" energy policy to the test.' Donors who shell out $25 or more will receive a gauge of their own.

For a second straight week, this is Obama on defense -- even with his latest ad: "The proposals Mr. Obama offered Monday represented an effort to return the campaign's focus to bread-and-butter issues after he found himself repeatedly on the defensive last week against a newly aggressive McCain campaign," Larry Rohter writes in The New York Times. "Mr. McCain and his campaign have been increasingly tweaking Mr. Obama and his energy policy."

"[McCain] had to find a way to basically shout above the media coverage of Barack Obama, and his way of doing it has been to make little jokes," ABC's Cokie Roberts said on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. "McCain needs to define what is essentially still a blank slate about Barack Obama, before we get to the conventions."

"It's not hard to see why the GOP has latched onto gas prices as a lifeline in an otherwise hostile political environment," Time's Jay Newton-Small writes. "Polls show it is the one area where they run even, or anywhere close to their Democratic counterparts, on the issue of which of the two parties would better handle the economy."

And isn't the use of oil reserves the kind of gimmick Obama has rejected in the past? "It is not designed to manipulate prices," says Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I-N.Y., per the New York Daily News' Richard Sisk. "Quite the contrary, it is a reserve in case, God forbid, this country is cut off from overseas oil."