From the NYT editorial blog:

September 16, 2008,  3:05 pm
Hey, How Hard Is It to Be President?
By The Editorial Board

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina -- a major player in the McCain-Palin campaign -- was asked on a KTRS Radio program in St. Louis whether Sarah Palin had the experience to run a major company like H.P.

Her answer: "No, I don't. But you know what? That's not what she's running for."

Of course, the McCain campaign insists that Governor Palin would be ready to step in as president should anything happen to him.

Running a company, it seems, is hard.

Leading a nation of 300 million people, with a budget of around $3 trillion, a couple of major wars going on, and the capacity to blow up the planet. Well, that's doable.

The same should be true of a VP as "energy czar".

[That's funny - don't we already have a Department and Secretary of Energy? This is a stark example of how a mccain admin would be Republican business as usual - bypassing the career experts, doing an end run around established government process, including regulatory process, throwing mud on stable government in general.
Also, am I the only one who's unnerved by the steady popularity in this country for seeking out a "czar", with all the authoritarian desires that term implies, for every problem, real or perceived? This at least is not a Rep vs. Dem issue - I recall czar-lust under Clinton as well. Rather, it bespeaks an impatience with, perhaps an exhaustion by, normal, stable government, and the dream of a man on horseback (or in this case yahoo on a snowmobile) sweeping that all away.

Clarification - I said it's not an intrinsically partisan issue, but the demagogy, irresponsible executive power, and desperation for simple answers involved does inherently favor the Rep agenda.

Still, it's possible the "energy czar" talk is just talk, to reinforce for the rubes this absurd lie that Palin know anything about energy or anything else, or that she has any qualifications at all. Not to mention the lie we keep getting, that she "took on Big Oil", as if there was some difference in policy principle, when all it was was a squabble over the loot.]  

Fiorina says elsewhere that Mccain too wouldn't be able to run a big company. (She ought to know - she was incompetent at it as well.)

Her most basic claim is that being governor of Alaska makes her competent on energy issues is refuted by her own words within minutes.

She claims that Alaska supplies the US with 20% of it's energy when it only supplies 4.5% of the oil it uses. Of course those supplie don't go to the US but to oil refineries that export more petroleum product than that out of the country.

The US could shut down Alaskan oil operations entirely by switching the Northeast from oil heat to geothermal heat pumps and lowering the speed limit to 60 mph.

Of course we'd still need to import oil but until we quit using it to push SUV's and jet airliners we will be importing oil.

Put the Carbon Back

Of course, here in Alaska, we've got the energy thing all figured out.  

We're running countless villages, as well as some larger towns and a city on diesel generators - making for some of the most expensive electricity in the nation.  This is in a state where renewable sources (wind, geothermal, etc...) are there for the using, and where the state government has a massive surplus to put into new projects if it wished to...

One of the biggest reasons given for the $1200 "energy rebate" Palin pushed for this year was that energy costs are so high here that some towns in the bush are in danger of shutting down because of it.  The village of Adak on the Aleutian Islands recently told everyone to leave because the city had no more money to buy fuel.

Won't it be great when the nation's energy situation mirrors ours?

-Erin
www.GroundTruthTrekking.org

... but "drill baby drill" does not constitute a viable, sustainable U.S. energy-independence policy.

Peak oil production in the United States occurred almost 40 years ago and no amount of drilling (or wishful thinking) will change that.