The New Old Politics.

Americans have long had a love affair with contradictory goals.

We want to eat more, but weigh less.
We want to work less, but make more.
We want small taxes, but big government.
And so on.

Deep down inside, we probably know we can't have our cake and eat it too. But who cares? Reality tends to be a downer. It's more fun to dream.

Politicians have never been in the habit of waking people from their pleasant dreams. In business, the customer is always right. In politics, the voter is always right. Even when they're wrong.

So, it doesn't come as a surprise that two of the biggest items on Barack Obama's agenda are contradictory.

The first item? Combatting global warming. As anyone with a television knows, global warming is a big deal. The ice caps are melting. Adorable polar bears are drowning. Poor people are in poverty. Bad weather is happening. And according to leading scientists in the field of appearing in documentaries, our nasty habit of burning fossil fuels is to blame. In order to restore the north pole to a bear-friendly state, the good people of our land are told that they must stop driving their Hummers, and start walking, biking, taking the bus, and when necessary, driving tiny euro-cars.

In other words, they have to use less gas. The ultimate goal is to quit using it all together.

So what's wrong with rising gas prices? Isn't the high price of gas playing a valuable part in nudging people away from the diabolical liquid? Aren't people driving less, buying more fuel efficient cars, and taking mass transit when feasible? Isn't this the stuff we've been told that we must do in order to save our poor, ailing mother earth?

Yes, it is.

But it also happens to contradict the second big item on Obama's agenda: battling our current economic woes -- which have been largely caused by rising fuel prices. It appears that the majority of voters, despite the fact that they claim to be highly concerned about global warming, don't enjoy cutting back. They want cheap gas again. Which puts Mr. Obama in a pickle. Despite how fashionable the green movement is right now, "pocketbook issues" like this have almost always decided the fate of presidential elections in the past.

Logically, it would appear that there our nation is faced with a tough choice:

(1) We can choose to believe that global warming, caused by human carbon emissions, is a serious threat to humanity, and make drastic economic sacrifices (at least in the short term) by cutting into our consumption and production of fossil fuels -- not to mention our consumption and production of just about everything else.

(2) Or, we can choose to believe that man-made global warming is not a massive global threat, and try to lower our fuel costs by expanding oil production at home and abroad.

These choices are mutually exclusive. We can't move away from fossil fuels without feeling any sort of economic pinch. And we can't expand the supply -- and thus lower the price -- of fossil fuels and expect people to use less of them. A decision has to be made.

Not that you'd be able to tell that from listening to Barack Obama.

In the magical realm of Obamaland, the entire energy infrastructure of our country, as well as the energy sector of our economy, will be gutted and rebuilt without consumers feeling the slightest bump. In fact, by harnessing the power of change, and $150 billion taxpayer dollars, Obama hopes to raise the economy to new heights by creating "5 million new green jobs". This will actually happen. And what about the current economic problems caused by rising fuel prices? Obama believes strongly that they are indeed problematic, and bad. They are also Bush's fault. How will fuel prices go down if the country switches to sources of energy that must be heavily subsidized to even begin competing with fossil fuels? You just have to believe, and the enchanted pixie of clean energy will make it so.

An adoring article in TIME magazine once labeled Barack Obama "The Candor Candidate". But when it comes to the environment and the economy, there's not a scrap of straight-talk to be found. Obama won't dare ask the grouchy American people to make sacrifices for the planet's greater good. But he's not about to tell his poorly-groomed, eco-hippy supporters to take a hike either. Instead, Barack Obama has nobly chosen to travel down a third road: political, pragmatic pandering.

Clearly, this is change we can believe in.