by Evie Stone

Top o' the morning.

Tuesday is still all about energy. Barack Obama continues his tour flogging his new plan with two stops in Ohio today (and a much-speculated-upon empty block of time in Indiana this afternoon). Obama's energy plan calls for (among other things) implementing a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies and using the revenue to deliver rebate checks to families; giving sizeable tax breaks to Americans who purchase high-efficiency vehicles; setting ambitious goals for achieving energy efficiency over the next two decades; and tapping the nation's strategic oil reserve for short term gas-price relief. The Obama campaign also released a second contrast ad in two days, touting Obama's new plan and dinging McCain's energy policy.

The idea of tapping into the reserve, along with Obama's recent comments that he might be open to expanding offshore drilling as part of an energy overhaul, place Obama closer in line with public opinion. The LA Times puts it thus:

Those shifts by Obama are indicative of the pressure that politicians of both parties — but especially Democrats — are under to develop specific, short-term energy proposals in the face of rising costs. Against that backdrop, politicians risk looking insensitive if they tout only solutions that could take years to hit the pump, such as Obama's plan to develop hybrid cars that can travel 150 miles on a gallon of gasoline.

Which is riskier, shifting positions (at the risk of being called a flip-flopper) or being out of line with voters on an issue that polls have consistently placed at the top of their list?

John McCain, meanwhile, is battling awkward evidence that Hess oil company employees went on a donating spree after his own June reversal on offshore oil drilling.

 

News organizations will likely continue to look at one Hess office manager and her railroad foreman husband who reportedly have donated a combined amount of more than $60,000 to McCain and the GOP this year. The LAT picked up that item after TPM wrote about it yesterday, and it's getting lots of play in liberal blogs. The McCain campaign says they have examined the donations and found nothing out of whack.

And finally, Mark Penn writes this distracting line in a Politico column about the conflict between candidates of strength vs. candidates of ideas that he posits played a role in past GOP Presidential victories:

I sometimes joke that for presidents and large figures, "being human is overrated."

Ha! But wait. That's not really a joke. It's a primary campaign strategy that created enormous tension within the Hillary Clinton campaign, eventually led to Penn's ouster as Clinton's chief strategist, and arguably lost Clinton the Democratic nomination. Is Penn trying to redeem himself by continuing to argue that the Commander-In-Chief Cyborg Strategy would have been a winner in the general election?