Making The Pitch

Obama’s Oval Office address on the Gulf oil spill may or may not move a comprehensive energy bill forward, but its tone reminded me of the big speeches he gave during the weeks preceding passage of the health care bill. He framed our dependence on fossil fuels as another Big Problem that we’ve avoided confronting for far too long. He also appealed to the American can-do spirit and challenged Congress to pass something, but avoided specifying the contours of the legislation.

I don’t think presidential speeches play more than a marginal role in passing major legislation. Voter pressure and political self-interest are far more important motivating factors. But Obama’s “big push” speeches are useful for crystallizing the issue and focusing the media’s attention, albeit briefly, on policy solutions. The odds of a climate and energy bill passing remain abysmally low and the President could have done much more to use this crisis as an opportunity for action, so it seems premature to expect the political narrative to change. But the health care debate also demonstrated the folly of trying to predict what Congress will do.