Tire Pressure - Snicker, Snicker

Well, this is pretty common. A Democratic Presidential candidate makes a comment and the right intentionally distorts it to make the candidate look foolish. Then they use their supplicants in the media to pile on the mockery.

In this case, the issue is tire pressure. A lot of time this stuff comes from surrogates, but here it's coming right from the campaign itself.

Meanwhile, the McCain team uses Obama’s comments as a fundraising tool.

E-mail from topper Davis to supporters: “I’m asking for your help in putting Senator Obama’s ‘tire gauge’ energy policy to the test. With an immediate donation of $25 or more, we will send you an ‘Obama Energy Plan’ tire pressure gauge.”

Earlier: The RNC says it will deliver gauges reading “Obama’s energy plan” to Washington newsrooms.

Steve Benen has a good roundup of the very coordinated silliness.

There's a sleight-of-hand going on here. Nobody can deny that proper car care is useful to improving efficiency. It's just the facts. Bush's Department of Energy promotes it, NASCAR promotes it as both an efficiency and a safety issue, and Republican governors promote it. It's an incontrovertible fact.

In fact, to make Obama's point, proper tire pressure actually would do more to lower individual gas prices than offshore drilling. This of course says more about drilling, and its worthlessness as a policy, than tire pressure.

Obama was observing that coastal drilling would save us so little oil and so little money even twenty years from now, that you can actually save more money immediately by doing "simple things" such as keeping your tires properly inflated.

Where did he get that crazy idea? From George Bush's Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency. (hat tip: Get Energy Smart! Now!)

Their joint site fueleconomy.gov is loaded with fuel-saving, money-saving tips. Keep your tires properly inflated, for example, and you can save up to 12 cents a gallon.

Compare that immediate savings from that single tip, with what coastal and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling combined would get you two decades from now: 6 cents a gallon.

And that's being generous, because Bush's Energy Department says we can't expect any impact on prices from coastal drilling until the year 2030.

In their knee-jerk mockery, conservatives are flying closer to the truth then they intend to.

Obama never said that tire maintenance was his entire energy policy - this is the intentional distortion fueling the catty mockery here. In fact, what he was saying, which could be made very catty, is that offshore drilling is such a loser that even filling your tires properly has a better chance of saving people money.

It's amazing what you can get away with when you decide to be willfully dishonest - and when you have a media which has no problem backing you up on it. Benen makes a solid point.

Consider a counter-example. McCain was talking about skin cancer the other day.

McCain emphasized that skin cancer is preventable, and implored Americans to wear sunscreen, especially over the summer. What’s wrong with this advice? Not a thing. It’s a smart, sensible thing to say.

But imagine if Obama and his surrogates said the entirety of McCain’s healthcare policy is sunscreen application. McCain doesn’t really care about cancer, they could argue, he just wants everyone to run out at get some SPF 30. Those vying to be Obama’s running mate started holding up bottles of Coppertone during their speeches, saying things like, “We want you to wear sunscreen, you know, it will very mildly improve your chances of not getting sick. But wearing sunscreen is not a healthcare policy for the United States of America.”

This, of course, would be insane. And yet, that’s pretty much what’s become of Republican campaign rhetoric of late.

The thing is, for the currently uninsured, sunscreen IS McCain's entire health care policy.

Some are speculating that Obama is offering a dogwhistle to working class NASCAR fans who tinker with their cars. And that may be. But clearly, the right is trying to bully Obama and the Democrats by just dishonestly suggesting that their entire energy policy rests on a tire gauge. But of course, the entire Republican energy policy rests on an offshore oil rig which will take a minimum of 10 years to bear fruit.

Why do Republicans want to impose government solutions instead of valuing personal responsibility for car care? Why do they hate individual initiative so much? Why do they want Big Government and Big Oil (in their case, the same thing) to take care of all their problems?