That lady speaking yesterday evening was a grave disappointment. All hot air.
Oh. No. Not that one. (I’m like Chris Matthews here: I meant the other one.)
I’m referring to former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina – who, it seems, has been assigned the task of employing her business credentials as cover while she cheerleads for Sen. John McCain’s misguided cap-and-trade scheme. You know, that Kyoto-style job-killer that is causing so much economic hemorrhaging in Europe?
From the transcript:
He [McCain] will create a cap and trade system that will encourage the development of alternative energy sources.
He will help advance clean coal technology and nuclear power. And allthis will both create jobs and lower the cost of energy.
By “encourage,” she means make hydrocarbons so expensive that uneconomic alternatives suddenly appear to be options. This is a little hard to square with the “lower the cost of energy” thing, with real-world experience and even with theory. Remember, the entire purpose of cap-and-trade is to increase the cost of the most affordable energy sources, to then let market forces out on parole to try and clean up some of the distortion.
Unfortunately, I’ve got very good reason to believe that this pains her to say as much as it pains McCain’s political types to use convention time on it. What, precisely did this get them? Right: nothing. So it’s pretty clearly a sign of a true believer who, having made up his mind in less serious circumstances, is now not open to advice.
As some matters are off-the-record, please allow me to just say that a European legislator has read a McCain advisor chapter-and-verse on what carbon cap-and-trade has meant to the Euros’ economy, in front of about a hundred activists, imploring her to talk some sense into the candidate and campaign on this one. Larry Kudlow has tried to do likewise quite publicly — as economic adult Phil Gramm has privately, I’m fairly certain – among other McCain insiders.
My colleague’s description at the time of the lady’s response to the plea said it all: “nodding, ashamedly.”
It was pretty clear she gets it. And I know this is politics. But that’s not a universal excuse for doing any old thing one feels like doing. My advice to this campaign remains what I’ve said all along: No one thinks you can reverse course on this, but — for heaven’s sake — stop digging.