One reason why no one pays any attention to what a candidate says on the issues is that no one believes they say what they think. This is cynical. And accurate.

If you don’t recognize a platform as a jumble of marketing phrases meant to cobble together enough votes to win, you are not paying attention. Or you really, really believe that (fill in a hot-button issue) is vital to your/our prosperity/security/eternal salvation, and you will blind yourself to the reality because you think it is absolutely necessary that (hot-button issue) be represented in the platform.

That said, we’re glad someone else pays attention to what the candidates say. And we read with interest a recent blog entry from the New York Times’ editorial page editor, Robert B. Semple, Jr., on Mitt Romney’s energy plan.

According to Semple, “Mr. Romney further suggests that oil production in the United States would magically increase if the states were allowed ‘to oversee the development and production of all forms of energy on public lands within their borders.’” (This is in line with Utah’s attempt to reclaim much of the federal land in that state, which has upset the outdoor recreation industry.)

“States, as a rule, tend to be interested mainly in resource development,” Semple adds. “In the energy future envisioned by Mr. Romney, that is precisely what would prevail.”

The avowedly liberal group ThinkProgress has gone Mr. Semple one better and identified five national parks that would be “threatened” if energy-friendly Romney were to take office. (It’s hard to think of Pres. Obama as being unfriendly to oil and gas; since he’s taken office, Semple points out, the number of rigs in American oil fields has quadrupled.) In some cases, “threatened” parks would have drilling or mining within ten miles, which could cause air pollution or unsightly visuals. (Already, ThinkProgress notes, oil rigs are visible just outside Theodore Roosevelt National Park.)

The organization has several videos describing how mining and other resource development has already affected the Parks. The one on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon is persuasive enough to  make us hope Mr. Romney’s position on resource development is another dry-rot platform plank and not a genuine policy position.

 

Image: Mitt Romney laughs at a rally in Paradise Valley, AZ (December 2011), by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons