Veteran Bush observers have learned to be cautious about confusing the "compassionate cover" from the brutal conservative ideology guiding his main policy currents.  I suspect the independence from Middle East oil line is meant to give a reassurance signal that we will not be constantly intervening there to protect oil supplies..err...I mean bringing democracy to the region... a signal that is at odds with a good part of the stubborness of the rest of his speech, and the dangers of retreating from the world.

I doubt Bush intends anything substantial or sustained about alternative energy sources.  What worries me more is the inability of the environmental, progressive and Democratic Party responses to educate the public and come up with a compelling new direction.  

The Apollo Alliance's New Apollo Project would seem to be the most promising start (http://www.apolloalliance.org) because it would re-direct the more than $37 billion in annual energy subsidies that now go to the old fossil fuel based system, and put almost a decade's worth of that money, $300 billion, into new energy directions and greater energy efficiency.  Although alternative energy and the Middle East were mentioned in the formal response given by new Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine, it was only a brief reference towards the end of his speech - and the Apollo Alliance didn't get a plug, so people who haven't heard about it didn't learn that night.  So even though two books by Democratic mainstream players, Gene Sperling's "The Pro-Growth Progressive" and Stanley Greenberg's "The Two Americas both mention the project - it couldn't make it into the formal Democratic response for a national audience.  

Not that the new Apollo Project is not without its critics or difficulties, as witnessed by the environmental groups that have failed to sign on because it doesn't deal with a new regulatory program for global warming gases or a carbon trading system like the McCain-Lieberman bill.  And Ross Gelbspan's book "Boiling Point"  also delivers some compelling and responsible criticism of its limitations.  

Over at the Center for American Progress, John Podesta's think tank laden with former Clinton administration officials, they were pushing for a vastly reduced subset of Apollo's ambitious agenda of new jobs and investments with their Agriculture, Energy and Trade policy forum on Dec. 6th, 2005.  I questioned Gayle Smith about the possibility that this more limited emphasis on trade, ag and bio-fuels might not undercut the Apollo's scope - on the premise that whenever Congress if offered a smaller, more focused direction it usually choose that over the tougher more ambitious one - she indicated that it didn't hurt Apollo but ran on parallel policy tracks. We'll see.  While this confrence's emphasis was hard to argue with in its specifics, my take is that it will only undercut Apollo on the very practical ground that Apollo needs national introduction and focus if it is to have a chance.  

And, after all, the Apollo Project's design and vision of jobs and alternative energy comes from, at least in good part, the rethinking of the environmental "community's" failures on global warming and energy, which gave rise to the publication of the essay the "Death of Environmentalism," rightly given much coverage in Grist.

As part of the critical dialogue about that essay, Ken Ward made the excellent point that the environmental grant funders have never approached the $ or focus that would be needed to begin to persuade large portions of American Society that we are at a perilous point that requires enormous changes in policy direction.  Despite the enormous amount of global warming/energy information available on hundreds of web sites, our progressive story does not reach most Americans because it is not in major media channels....citizens have to seek it out.  

The Bush new direction teaser ought to be a painful goad,  a reminder to environmentalists, progressives and the Democratic Party that we don't have the coherence, magnitude or commitment yet to take the good initial directions of Apollo home to the majority of the American people.

William R. Neil Rockville, MD