Shortly after taking office, Vice President Dick Cheney made this now-infamous remark about energy policy:

“Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”

In his press conference on Thursday night, the President said:

To reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy, we must take four key steps.

First, we must better use technology to become better conservers of energy.

And secondly, we must find innovative and environmentally sensitive ways to make the most of our existing energy resources, including oil, natural gas, coal and safe, clean nuclear power.

Third, we must develop promising new sources of energy, such as hydrogen, ethanol or bio-diesel.

Fourth, we must help growing energy consumers overseas, like China and India, apply new technologies to use energy more efficiently and reduce global demand of fossil fuels.

It’s hard to figure out what’s going on here. Cheney says conservation plays no part whatsoever, and Bush puts it at the head of his list. Bush made his remarks in demanding that the Senate pass his energy plan by the summer. Conservation is not a significant factor in that plan, coal is in no way “environmentally sensitive,” we still haven’t found a long term solution for storing nuclear waste that has been piling up for 30 years, and almost no attention is being paid to alternative energy sources by this administration. Their energy package is nothing more than a thinly-disguised tax cut plan for the same oil and gas giants that are currently reporting record profits because of their ability to gouge consumers at the pump. All in a bill that even the President grudgingly admits will not reduce skyrocketing gas prices.

The CEO President and the “grown-up” whose job it is to keep things on track.