The time for a White House-led national energy policy is right now

It is currently conventional wisdom in Washington that the president will have a difficult time advancing any major new policy initiatives between now and the election. It would be a mistake for the president and unfortunate for the country were that to prove to be an accurate forecast.

Fortunately, nothing is more suspect than Washington’s conventional wisdom. Further, it is fully in the president’s power to challenge the low expectations of political professionals and average citizens everywhere by building his campaign around not only a rehash of what he has accomplished and a wish list of things for the future, but by enlivening it with meaningful, major new efforts that he is undertaking immediately due to the urgency of the challenges the United States faces.

One area in which such an effort is not just needed but is effectively several generations overdue is energy policy. To date, the administration’s efforts in the area of energy have concentrated on greening the U.S. energy mix and the jobs that green energy might bring. While worthy, the efforts have been bogged down and undercut for a variety of reasons: ranging from the tactical decision to put health care ahead of energy among policy priorities, the inflated and dubious nature of many green job provisions, the success of climate skeptics in impeding the cap-and-trade debate, and the recent kerfuffle over Solyndra (and, by extension, government energy loan programs, alternative energy programs in general, and the whole idea of "picking winners" associated with some elements of green energy policy).

The Energy Department even initiated a worthy Quadrennial Technology Review that mimicked the Quadrennial Defense Review, Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, and the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review processes at Defense, Homeland Security, and State respectively. But it was not a broad-gauge energy policy and the United States has been in need of such a policy for decades. There have been abortive efforts in that direction but they have been compromised or stopped short of becoming a regular element of U.S. government policy making.

One reason for the problem is that despite the fact that the Department of Energy was created to help ensure the creation of such policies during the 1970s, it is simply incapable of overseeing the development of the kind of comprehensive policy that is needed. Unlike defense policy or diplomacy policy, critical components of a true energy policy are managed not in one agency but across the entirety of the U.S. government. It is a domestic and an international issue, a security and an economic issue, a regulatory, financial, diplomatic, and environmental issue.

Furthermore, for better or for worse, energy issues have tended to become too politicized by different special interests. Recognizing the need for a "whole of government" approach to the issue, the Bush administration put Vice President Dick Cheney in charge of its effort in this direction. But because of his perceived closeness to certain segments of the energy community (which is far more diverse than typically understood), the process was sidetracked. Similarly, Obama’s efforts to date have been impeded because, as one senior official said to me, they have been "too tied up in the climate issue."

But of course, the reason an energy policy is so essential is because real energy policy is not just about green jobs, it is about every single job in the United States. Every business depends on access to energy. So do individual citizens and the economy as a whole. Energy, the largest industrial sector in the world, touches every other sector in profound ways. Interruptions in supply, spikes in prices, changes in regulation, shifts in demand, and innovations in technology have ripple effects that go from border to border, from the top to the bottom of the economy.

Indeed, part of the problem with the Obama administration’s framing of energy issues is that it has been too narrowly focused on new technology and regulation. Not only does energy require a "whole of government" approach, it demands a "whole of economy" approach and above and beyond that a "whole of U.S. national interests" vision.

The president could initiate a regular, institutionalized, interagency, economy-wide, holistic energy policy development process without congressional approval — though he should do it with active bipartisan consultation. He contemplated this during his transition when the idea of an Energy Policy Council or Energy Security Council was contemplated, advocated by at the time by folks like campaign honcho and thoughtful energy-policy thinker, former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta.

Because the approach needs to be interagency, it should be directed out of the White House. And because energy security and economic security need to drive it, it should be quarterbacked by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon with the support of National Economic Advisor Gene Sperling. The NSC has more staff, so it should probably lead on this. The Department of Energy could serve as a kind of secretariat and coordinate key components. But vital issues go well beyond their scope of work and capabilities and pertain to questions like regional stability, access to sea lanes, resource competition, currency policy, etc. While there is a fondness and precedent for quadrennial reviews in the federal government at the moment, it might make sense for this to be more frequent, possibly biennial, especially given the speed of developments in this area. If a congressional mandate for the approach can be won, terrific. If it can be done by executive order, terrific. Who could possibly rationally oppose the development of such a policy?

In an election year, of course, such an effort would seem timely and be widely supported — especially with all eyes on the economy, with so many tens of millions of jobs supported directly and indirectly by the energy sector, and with so many watershed developments possible in areas like supply (shale gas, offshore gas, oil sands, the Arctic) and technology (efficiency tops the list), even revenue generation (the tax policy implications are great and reform opportunities, even those fueled by some kind of market-driven energy or carbon mechanism would be well worth considering). We are on the verge of real transformation at home and around the world in this area — in traditional as well as new forms of energy, with the vastly increased possibilities of U.S. domestic supply one of the few clear potential game changers for the U.S. economy. (China’s domestic energy development policy focuses on "energy under foot." I’m not for slavishly following Chinese policies … but "under foot" would be a good place to look for our security and growth, too.)

Developing the policy would take us into 2013 and either the second term of the Obama administration or the first term of a new administration. But America should not wait until then to address this vital set of concerns … and much can be done during the year ahead to send a strong message that a time of critical national and economic security we are not sitting on our hands. President Obama can launch such an effort, get credit for it, and address a long overdue need within the U.S. policy apparatus.