I’m glad to see this policy shift, but it does again represent an expired campaign promise. Even ABC News saw this one coming.

In June 2008, then-senator Obama told reporters in Jacksonville, Florida:

When I’m president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium here in Florida and around the country that prevents oil companies from drilling off Florida’s coasts. That’s how we can protect our coastline and still make the investments that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and bring down gas prices for good.

Today, the “Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time,” including off the coast of Jacksonville, where Obama offered that statement.