COMMENTARY | President Obama has postponed a decision whether to approve the Keystone pipeline that would carry oil from Canada's tar sand fields in Alberta to refineries in Texas, pending further study. Oddly, that further study will be done after the next election.
Obama was faced with a fight between two competing constituencies. On the one hand environmentalists were angry because the pipeline would cross over an aquifer in Nebraska where wildlife resided. They are, besides, against hydrocarbon fuel as a matter of principle. One the other hand unions were eager to have some of the tens of thousands of jobs that building the pipeline and refining the oil would provide.
So the president did what he always does when faced with a hard decision. He punted.
Many analysts liked the pipeline because it would have allowed the United States to buy oil from Canada, a friend and ally, and not buy so much oil from the Middle East, a region that is volatile at best, hostile at worse. This is the "ethical oil" vs. "conflict oil" question. Oil bought from the Middle East is used to fund terrorists and tyrants. Oil bought from Canada would be used to fund more benign things, like perhaps buying American goods.
It has been noted in the past that Obama tends to shy away from hard decisions. As a state senator and a United States senator, he very often voted "present" on tough issues. By kicking the Keystone pipeline question down the road, Obama did the presidential equivalent of voting present. He also chose his own reelection prospects and the money that environmentalists can raise on his behalf over American jobs and prosperity.
Obama is playing a dangerous game, politically. The republicans now have a ready-made issue in the president's cynical choice of his job over the jobs of the American people. Americans will be reminded of this choice in a hundred campaign ads and a thousand stump speeches.
Worst, the Canadians may lose patience with Obama's dithering and look for other markets for their oil. China, it is suggested, is very eager to buy. A pipeline could be build to Vancouver and oil that might have been America's could flow east, to America's rival, all because Obama was too afraid to make a sound decision and anger a key constituency.
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