Sunday, April 27, 2008

They Never, Ever, Learn

I know Irony died some time ago, but I think I just found its moldering corpse. Somewhere around the last paragraph of this bizarre Laura Rozen piece on what a sweet, sweet, sensible guy James Woolsey turns out to be:

An independent streak has run throughout Woolsey's 40-plus years in Washington. He has served in four administrations, both Republican and Democratic. In the twilight of the Cold War, he found himself increasingly identifying with Republicans on national security. He spent three years as a member of then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board. When I met with him, he was expecting another career change, leaving the federal contractor Booz Allen Hamilton to join a California firm that invests in alternative-energy technology. He'd also just appeared in an anti-oil print ad for the American Clean Skies Foundation, a PR group started by a natural gas company.

{I believe this is called "I'm also a member of the Hair club" approach to public policy. Also known as, if I can turn a buck, I love it!}

Being a green neoconservative is becoming less lonely, Woolsey says, especially as more hawks come to see energy as a security issue. He tells a story about an argument with a friend who is a global warming skeptic. When Woolsey explained how improvements to the electrical infrastructure could make it safer from terrorists, his friend replied, "Oh, well, that's fine, then—we can do all that as long as it's not because of this fictional global warming."

{Stupid is, as stupid does}

...

Woolsey concedes that he is disappointed in the Bush administration's indifference toward renewable energy, but he notes that the president's admission that "we're addicted to oil" was "a sign that they're starting to take the issue seriously."

{Let me get this straight. 40 years in Washington and he still doesn't realize that public speeches are for the rubes and do not actually represent real policy intentions?}

What does he think it will take to get Americans to really kick the oil habit? {oh, do tell? I'm sure its as "iconoclastic" as the rest of Woolsey's patented shtick} Woolsey's looking to fellow Iraq War stalwart John McCain to do the job, citing the senator's support for a carbon-cap-and-trade system (cosponsored by Lieberman). "McCain is like Teddy Roosevelt," Woolsey says. "You know, Teddy Roosevelt was an environmentalist. He helped found the national park system." And how long does he think a Republican-led energy revolution would take? He estimates about eight years.

{I'm speechless. Frankly, I'm all out of Snark.}