I Think People Like This Guy

100,000 in Denver. This follows close to 100,000 in St. Louis.



Likability isn't as much of a factor in Presidential elections as people like to make it - but it's undeniably a factor. There's a comfort zone that people take into account. This is why is was slander on the part of the media to make Al Gore so unlikable compared to W.

What's rare here is that the likable guy also has an attention to detail and a head for policy.

From a purely economic perspective, finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical. There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy.

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that's going to be my number one priority when I get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation.

This is just incredibly perceptive and I'm glad Obama has picked up on it. Something as simple as energy efficiency in California has created 1.5 million new jobs in the past 30 years. Energy connotes productivity, it connotes a cleaner environment, and it gives us what we need to maintain our power as a society - something to MAKE. We have to notice the inter-connectedness of all of this.

What I hope is that he also has the ability to make his policies meet the challenges ahead. In other words, will he leverage his likability to push people toward the policies we truly need.