Jim Geraghty includes in his post over at NRO's The Campaign Spot these salient notes about Barack Obama's tire gauge gaffe.Seemingly every Republican is walking around today with a tire gauge labeled "Obama's Energy Plan."...
I hope McCain and his surrogates remember the key point in this — not that checking your tire pressure has a marginal impact and that two-thirds of drivers already have the right tire pressure, but that Obama said it would generate as much as offshore drilling — roughly 1.6 trillion gallons in the OCS.
We went over the math this Wednesday, and Obama's just not right (and that's with me using an extremely generous assessment that tire inflation would increase mileage 12.5 percent for one-third of America's drivers). It's not merely that Obama's energy policy consists of recommending the minute and mundane, but that he does so while rejecting solutions that could have a dramatic impact on energy production, oil production, and gas prices.
He's either not familiar enough with the issue, or way too careless in asserting the benefits of his policies. That's the message voters need to come away with, not just, "Ha, ha! Look, a tire gauge!"
