Lately I can’t turn the TV on without running into an ad for the Pickens Plan, T. Boone Pickens’ $58 million attempt to liberate the US from its sordid addiction to foreign oil.
Interesting things about Pickens and this campaign:
o Pickens is an oil magnate. (Can you hear the crows going “OMG! OMG!”?) Soon, he’ll be a wind magnate too.
o The ads are totally finance-focused. Pickens hardly says the e-word (“environmental”) at all.
Why the last bullet matters: Pickens is pushing his wind-power plan as a smart money decision. This is a good way to avoid pissing off certain high-profile Republicans that, for the most part, believe environmentalism is a cause framed (and owned!) by Democrats that hate money (and oil! And freedom!). And while Pickens is a Republican, keeping politics — and politically-sensitive subjects — out of these ads is a clever way to garner bipartisan support for his cause.
It turns out nobody hates money, and we’d all like to have more of it and be out of debt to China, so if wind power can get us there, that’s icing on the sustainability cake, baby.
