Energy teams see different shades of green

[Ron Burgundy]

Facing soaring gasoline prices and the prospect of sky-high heating bills this winter, presidential rivals Barack Obama and John McCain have assembled teams of top-notch energy advisers to formulate some solutions.

Two of Obama’s leading energy advisers — Jason Grumet and Heather Zichal — developed strong connections with the environment when they were young and take a middle-of-the-road approach to environmental issues.

Grumet, who is the Democratic candidate’s point man on energy, has spent most of his career building compromises on energy between the business community and green interest groups. He was executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, a clean energy coalition of industry and environmental representatives. He continues as president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit established by a group of former Senate majority leaders to address some of the nation’s toughest policy issues in “a pragmatic and politically viable manner.”

Looking back to his youth, he fondly recalls camping trips with friends.

Grumet, 41, met Obama early in the Illinois senator’s first term in Washington in 2005, when Grum­et pitched him on the idea of strengthening vehicle fuel economy standards.

The senator was impressed and joined forces with Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) in vouching for strong corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards. At the time, Grumet said, even the environmental movement had barely touched on car emissions.

Obama had “the insight and approach necessary to make real progress on tough stuff,” Grumet told Politico. “I got to watch Obama and his staff do exactly what was needed to break through 30 years of polarization on vehicle fuel economy standards.”

The two men kept in touch, with Grumet often serving as a witness on congressional energy panels on Capitol Hill.

His influence played a key role helping the Senate establish a link between carbon emissions and global warming. He was part of an informal group that began advising Obama prior to his formal campaign launch, and he has been with the campaign ever since.

Zichal, who helps direct the Obama campaign’s environmental and energy policy team from its Chicago headquarters, spent some of her childhood on her grandfather’s farm in northeastern Iowa. In her teens, she worked as a guide in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness along the Minnesota-Canada border.

“My experiences allowed me to gain respect for the environment and steered me initially to work on environmental policies,” Zichal said in an interview. “I quickly learned you can’t work on environmental issues without overseeing energy, too.”

Zichal spends her days largely coordinating Obama’s environment and energy platforms in key battleground states, tackling issues ranging from water in New Mexico to wolves in Montana.

“These are issues I’ve spent my entire career working on, and finally they are front and center,” she said. “I’m answering detailed questions about Obama’s position on the Clean Air Act from families in Ohio. It’s amazing.”

Her day often begins at 7 a.m. and rarely ends before 11 p.m. She says she has no post­election plans at this point. “I just want to get through the election ... and then go on vacation,” she quipped.

Zichal joined the Obama campaign in July after a stint on Capitol Hill as legislative director for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). In 2004, she directed environmental policy for his unsuccessful presidential campaign.

In firming up his energy platform, Obama asked Grumet and his staff to gather experts with diverse backgrounds and opinions. And there’s been no shortage of help. Aides say the campaign has been overwhelmed with volunteers from the energy field.

“This is a collaborative team effort with hundreds of people trying to develop ideas,” Grumet said. “More often [than] not, we have too many people making great suggestions, rather than too few.”

It’s been that sort of collaborative team that has advised Obama on controversial issues, such as determining whether carbon credits should be auctioned to polluting companies.

“Campaigns are not generally known for their supportive, collaborative nature. They’re generally high-pressure environments where after months of 90-hour weeks, people start to lose their cool,” Grumet said. “But this campaign has been unusually friendly, extremely run well, ... and hundreds of top policy experts have wanted to participate.”

The energy advisers who surround McCain tend to have strong policy backgrounds on Capitol Hill. A number are longtime friends and reflect McCain’s business-first mantra.

The Republican candidate’s top domestic policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, has crunched numbers for two Republican presidents, serving as President Bush’s chief economist on the White House Council of Economic Advisers and as a senior staff economist on the council under President George H.W. Bush.

Holtz-Eakin is McCain’s right-hand man on energy policy and works with a diverse team that offers wide-ranging advice.

The two met during the senator’s unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid, while Holtz-Eakin was a program director at Syracuse University’s policy research center. And they collaborated later, particularly on earmarks and the Pentagon’s Boeing tanker leases, when Holtz-Eakin was director of the Congressional Budget Office.

“I had the chance to watch him much more closely,” Holtz-Eakin said in an interview. “I admire the man. I admire his forthrightness. He consistently identified with the saying, ‘If you spend it, pay for it.’”

He joined the McCain campaign in 2006, starting as head of its economic policy shop and moving up to handle all domestic policy.

Under his direction, a large group of other top advisers, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, help smooth out wrinkles in specific policy areas.

Woolsey, a conservative Democrat, is now a partner at VantagePoint Venture Partners, a venture capital fund that invests in clean technology.

Woolsey’s approach to energy is rooted in national security. His interest was sparked during the 1973 national energy crisis, when he was general counsel of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

With his gas tank nearly empty, Woolsey sat in his car in a long gas station line after the large Arab oil-exporting countries refused to ship oil to countries supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War. His wait was so long that he missed part of a Capitol Hill hearing he was supposed to run.

“As I sat in the line, I realized the reason I was there was because the Saudis had cut off our oil for supplying Israel,” he said. “I got mad then and haven’t stopped being mad for 35 years.”

Woolsey and McCain first crossed paths in the late 1970s, when Woolsey was undersecretary of the Navy. The admiral in charge of congressional affairs had stopped by Woolsey’s office and asked him to check out McCain, then a commanding officer of a Navy training squadron after being released as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. The admiral was interested in naming McCain a Navy liaison to the Senate.

“I talked to several of his former POW buddies, who told me about his resistance to authority and how he was a very, very rebellious prisoner of war,” Woolsey said. “I came back early and said, ‘I think we want this guy on our side.’” The two have been friends ever since.

After Woolsey left the CIA in 1995, he stayed in contact with McCain, joining him at an annual NATO security conference and helping him campaign in key states.

Woolsey, 67, lives in Annapolis, Md., where solar panels dot the roof of his old farmhouse and small wind turbines on his dock help lift his boat in and out of the water. A geothermal system helps heat his home. And he drives a plug-in hybrid car.

“The first 20 miles a day are run on sunlight,” he said proudly.

source: Politico - http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081014/pl_politico/14544 [link]