Obama, Ethanol, and the “New Metropolitan Reality”

Obama opened with a reference to his time as a community developer in Chicago and he joked (I paraphrase):

“You know if I’m president I’m going to talk about cities. If I don’t,you know you can just talk to [Chicago] Mayor Daley who will make surethat the pot holes in front of my house don’t get filled.”

Obama called for a new vision of cities, one that recognizes the growthof both cities and metro areas... Strong cities, Senator Obamasuggested, are the backbone of regional growth and regional growth thesource of national prosperity.

Finally, the Illinois Senator returned to the vision of cities he setout at the beginning of the speech: “we must stop seeing cities asproblems and start seeing them as the solution.” Indeed, Obama calledthis the “new metropolitan reality”.

Obama promises to tell voters what they need to know and not what theywant to know. It’s a risky strategy, and one he doesn’t always follow,but when he put it into effect in April, by attacking McCain’s proposedsummer gasoline-tax holiday, he helped his campaign more than he hurtit. Last week, he denounced McCain’s latest reversal, on offshoredrilling. But he needs to go further. A year ago, he likened “thetyranny of oil” to that of Fascism and Communism, saying, “The veryresource that has fueled our way of life over the last hundred yearsnow threatens to destroy it if our generation does not act now and actboldly.” This is the kind of unequivocal message that Obama needs todevelop.