Credit Where It's Due

It is so, so easy to develop preconceived notions of a person that you ridicule and dismiss anything that person does. And when you dislike the person those preconceived notions are even harder to break. So it is with President George W. Bush. Those of us not drinking the GOP/Christianist Right Kool-Aid often dismiss everything Bush does.

Well, in his SOTU speech last week he proposed higher CAFE standards for cars. And it has been ridiculed. I didn't personally jump on that but have been skeptical and didn't want to accept it. Gregg Easterbrook points out that this is actually one of the things that many, many people have been wanting for a long time. And because it is Bush, and because we really, really don't like him, we dismiss it.

Sure, we could ask for and hope for more. We could ask that light trucks, including SUVs, are included in the new standards. We could ask that the new standards were stricter. We could ask for a carbon tax.

But this really is an important step in the right direction!