I thought this back-and-forth I’m having with Conor Clarke would be of interest to Planet Gore readers, who are all-too-familiar with the arguments made for and against Waxman-Markey. Clarke writes:

This is jumping back in time a bit, but I do want to respond at greater length to this post from Rob Harrison of Conservatives 4 Palin and this post from Stephen Spruiell of the National Review. They are unhappy because I wrote, contra Sarah Palin’s op-ed, “I don’t think cap and trade has many supporters who think it’s the best way to become ‘less dependent on foreign energy sources.’”
Spruiell says this is “ignorant” because prominent supporters of the Waxman-Markey bill have said the bill will help reduce dependence on foreign oil. But I stand by my claim entirely, and I invite Spruiell to reread my post a tad more carefully and tell me why it’s mutually exclusive with the evidence he introduces. If Spruiell and Harrison want to, we can certainly do a tedious interpretive dance over the meaning of “know,” “cap and trade,” “many,” and “best” (along with every other word in my original sentence), but that doesn’t sound to me like time well spent. (Definitions of “time well spent” can, of course, vary.)

Sorry Conor, but I think it’s time well spent. Maybe if your original sentence had read, “I don’t think cap and trade has many supporters among the people I take seriously who think it’s the best way . . . ” etc. But that’s not what you wrote. Your criticism of Palin was, and continues to be, that she was engaging “a baffling ancillary argument that no one was having.” That’s B.S. Lots of people are having that argument. It’s a critical part of the sales pitch being delivered by the bill’s supporters (including after the Palin op-ed: e.g., Sens. Boxer and Kerry).

I give credit to Clarke for making honest arguments about cap-and-trade — i.e. acknowledging the costs involved and not trying to paper over them and sell Waxman-Markey as a jobs bill (like Pelosi) or as a way to break our highly unpopular dependence on foreign oil (like Obama, Waxman, Gore, and hundreds of other prominent advocates for the legislation) — we simply disagree over whether the benefits would be worth the costs.

But Waxman-Markey’s most prominent supporters have not brought the same degree of honesty to the debate — not even close. I would rewrite Clarke’s original sentence this way: “Almost all of cap-and-trade’s most prominent supporters argue that it’s the best way to become ‘less dependent on foreign energy sources.’” That would be a statement of fact. More to the point, the prevalence of this spurious argument is probably the reason that Sarah Palin felt compelled to address it in her op-ed.

Why does this matter? Let’s put it this way: There’s the argument the wonks are having, centered around the costs and benefits of capping emissions, and then there are the arguments the politicians are making, involving things like how many jobs the bill will create or how it will break our dependence on foreign oil. Which ones are more important in terms of how the public perceives the issue, keeping in mind that only 25 percent of the public knows what cap-and-trade is?