No one should expect Jeb Bush to find nice things to say about the Democrat who wants to take the White House away from his brother, but to call John Kerry oil-thirsty is twisted even by the modern standards of political spin. Did he forget what his brother, Texas oil driller George W. Bush, used to do for a living?
The environmental strategy that Kerry outlined in a visit to Tampa last week included a nuanced, but fully comprehensible, view of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Kerry said he would support drilling in the deep-water western portions of the gulf, but not close to the Florida shoreline. "Now, there is a capacity to protect what we have today, the protections for the coast of Florida, and still be able to drill in those locations where they're already permitted, already had the environmental impact study, they already have the leases," he said.
The governor must also have forgotten that his brother has wanted to drill much more. President Bush was aiming within 30 miles of the Florida Panhandle before ceding to an avalanche of criticism in 2002, the year Gov. Bush was seeking his own re-election. At the time, Gov. Bush himself said: "I don't like to disagree with my brother's administration, but when it's in the best interest of the state, I have to."
Maybe the governor also hasn't read the energy task force report produced by Vice President Dick Cheney, a report whose consultants the president has fought in court to keep secret. The Cheney energy policy sets its sights on more oil, gas and coal exploration, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, publicly owned conservation lands and large swaths of the Gulf and California coastlines.
Kerry, for the record, has consistently opposed drilling off Florida's coast as a member of the U.S. Senate. In fact, he even voted with Sen. Bob Graham last year in an attempt to block a Department of Interior inventory of oil resources along the Continental Shelf - an inventory supported by his opponent, President Bush.
Given the president's dismal record on the environment, oil drilling is not an issue to which they should want to call much attention. As evidence of Kerry's oil-drilling intentions, Gov. Bush had to cling to a story in the Independent Florida Alligator, a University of Florida student newspaper that has since published a correction the governor has refused to acknowledge. He would much better serve his brother's campaign by simply changing the subject.
