Photo by Ewen and Donabel. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

First, Republican presidential candidate John McCain had the brilliant idea to prove his ignorance of the economy by calling for a gas tax holiday. Basically, he proposed, the federal gas tax (currently set at 18.4 cents a gallon) and the diesel tax (24.4 cents) should be suspended between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Not much later, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton made the wrong move and backed the plan. Thus far, Democratic challenger Barack Obama is keeping his wits about him and is denouncing the plan.

But what do people who aren't running for president think? It's impossible for us to keep tabs on everyone who discusses the energy issue, because everybody's talking about it. Still, I wanted to point out one bit of media that covers the issue better than any other I've read/seen/heard. Earlier today on the Diane Rhem Show, three guests - Neil King, Jr., The Wall Street Journal's international energy reporter, Roger Diwan, partner, head of financial advisory PFC Energy, Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America - discussed the gas tax holiday and rising oil prices. I'm not sure which one of the three said it, but one of them called the idea "dumb on all counts." He is not the only critic of the idea (Tom Friedman recently lambasted it); in fact, it seems like just about everyone says it's a bad idea. Diane told her listeners that the show's producer looked long and hard for someone to defend the idea, but couldn't find anyone who was willing. And, while we can't possibly point you to everyone's thoughts on this issue, this morning's Diane Rhem show (listen here) presents a good, hour-long discussion on why McCain and Clinton has grabbed the wrong end of this political stick. Your thoughts?

Not quite sure what to make of this, but on a day when America's political eye is turned to Pennsylvania, Zipcar would like us all to know that the car-sharing company took a weeklong poll of Zipcar members in Philadelphia and found that Barack Obama was the runaway winner with 59 percent of the "vote." Hillary Clinton came in second with 25 percent and John McCain trailed with 16 percent. Of course, the "votes" were not simple "who do you like best?" questions but instead were taken from registrations of three vehicles: Honda Hillary, Mini Cooper McCain or BMW Barack. The number of hours each of these vehicles was reserved during the week counted towards the final score. Scientific? No. Accurate? No. Fun? Sure, why not. More details after the break.

The video above is an interview with the emanently quotable GM vice Chairman Bob Lutz on GM's move towards making greener cars and CAFE standards at the 2007 LA Auto Show. Bob says the reasoning for making more fuel efficient cars is really a global one because there are places around the world with $9-a-gallon gas. Bob continues by saying they will continue to make "both" anyways (i.e make green green cars and fuel wasting sports cars and SUVs).

In the interview, Bob was specifically asked about Hillary Clinton's CAFE standard which is the mpg plan by a presidential contender that calls for the largest increase in the shortest amount of time. Bob says the candidates are on a "mad race" to outdo each other by coming up with ever larger CAFE standards. Bob then makes an apparent direct slam at Clinton's plan to give them money to "retool" their plants and repeated his apparent new reasoning that CAFE means larger cars. Here is exactly what he said:

The politicians now seem to be in a mad race to who can come out with the larger number. Nobody seems to be concerned with technological feasibility or what it's going to take in terms of technology and cost to reach these numbers. Because anybody who thinks we can just sort of retool the factory to produce 35 MPG cars obviously does not understand the situation.

Bob could have meant another candidate reference to retooling plants but I don't recall another candidate or policy asking for retooling. Anyway, just the way says "retool" makes me think Hillary's energy plan was not read happily in GM offices. Bob Lutz wittiest quote, from the many great one in this short interview, was probably that "a lot of the CAFE discussion is well intentioned, maybe, but misguided." You, sir, are a poet.

Maybe.

[Source: Wall Street Journal video]