Ramesh Ponnuru thinks he’s located Obama’s good idea, and has started an interesting discussion over on WaPo’s Right Matters:

Barack Obama, unlike John McCain, wants to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring oil prices down. Obama would release 10 percent of the reserve. Robert Samuelson says Obama’s proposal is “an atrocious idea. The SPR was intended as insurance against a catastrophic loss of oil from wars, embargoes, terrorism or natural disasters. It should not be manipulated cynically for political advantage.” But we aren’t bound to respect the original intent behind the reserve — especially if it was a bad idea in the first place. If anything, Obama should be criticized for being too halfhearted: the whole reserve should be released, and this wasteful program should be shut down. Combine this proposal with McCain’s advocacy of drilling — the good idea that McCain hasn’t taken far enough — and you have the potential for both short-term and long-term relief from high oil prices. Does anyone else think that would be a good way to go?

I can’t say I’m as agitated by the release of SPR holdings to ease short-term pump pain as Samuelson and others are. But, as Ramesh notes, drilling will be necessary to meet the long-term needs of a vibrant, energy-hungry economy.

But flooding the market with all of the SPR’s 700 million barrels will induce a short-term price-drop that might create a false sense of energy security, though – no? That radical a short-term fix might blunt public pressure that’s currently building in favor of longer-term solutions. But if we can end SPR and still drill, drill, drill. . . .

I’d be interested to hear what Jerry Taylor thinks.