If you’ve watched the TV news carefully this week, you may have noticed that somewhere amidst the all-Russert-all-the-time lovefest there were other events taking place – some of which might have benefited from some Russertian analysis.

There are, of course, massive floods up and down the Mississippi River – a “500-year flood” that has taken out levees up and down the Iowa-Illinois border, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. The enormous damage to homes and lives has often taken a backseat to worries about the damage to the Midwest corn crop. (Less ethanol next winter! More food riots in Africa!)

There is the Bush-McCain pas de deux on oil drilling, with both men suddenly insisting that Congress open the waters off our shores to “exploration and exploitation” (as McCain put it) for the first time in 28 years. Failing to do so, one of them said (I can’t remember which – it’s hard to tell them apart), would doom our nation to many more years of gas prices like we’re seeing now ($4.63 at the local Chevron this afternoon).

And then there is the re-emergence of Rudy Giuliani to shore up McCain’s dipping foreign-policy numbers and to rationalize his slipping appreciation for American values. In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court decision restoring some measure of habeas corpus rights to Gitmo detainees – and with his 9/11 blinders enabling him to ignore the resurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan – Rudy trotted out an oldie but goodie, accusing Barack Obama of…wait for it…reverting to a “September 10 mindset” when it comes to applying the (god forbid) Constitution to our treatment of “enemy combatants.”

The media has treated these three developments separately, but to me they’re all part of the same story. Simply put, our nation’s disastrous energy policy is breaking us financially – and when it’s not busy doing that it’s getting us killed around the world, or avoiding the middleman and ravaging us at home via the type of extreme weather that just might portend a climate-change apocalypse. Out-of-control oil prices, Middle East instability and global warming are related problems that require a unified solution. It inevitably will be the task of the next president, even if it’s John McCain, to begin the long-delayed process of weaning this nation (and eventually the world) off of oil and other fossil fuels. (more…)