Just Another Lecture

President Bush wagged his finger Tuesday and lectured Californians that the energy issue needs action, not political excuses and blame-laying. But he brought little action with him and once again stiffed the state--this time in person--on the one thing it needs the most, a temporary federal cap on skyrocketing wholesale energy costs.

It wasn’t a great start for Bush’s first visit to California since becoming president. But then Gov. Gray Davis was not the perfect host. During a 40-minute meeting Davis told the president that he will sue the federal government in hopes of getting the courts to order a price cap--a threat that may have been undermined by a similar lawsuit being thrown out of appeals court at about the time they were meeting.

This was a unique test of political wills between the Republican president and the Democratic governor. Call it a standoff since no one expected Bush to change his opposition to price controls (although he might have offered some Clintonian sympathy for our pain).

Davis scored points by portraying Bush as an uncaring ideologue who has his California energy facts wrong. Indeed, Bush continued on Tuesday to misstate the issue of price caps in California by declaring they do nothing to reduce demand or increase supply. California never claimed they would do those things. The issue is the outrageous price that a handful of private generating companies have been able to charge in this energy-short state. The cost of power threatens to plunge California into economic recession and drag the rest of the nation with it.

These are not the sort of price controls imposed by the Nixon administration four decades ago--those that Vice President Dick Cheney recalls with a shudder. Davis is willing to guarantee the power companies profits of 30% to 40%. This is unlikely to scare them away, to deter them from building new plants as control opponents claim. They’re already building enough plants that the state will have plenty of power within two years.

What California does need is protection during the interim against power prices that have soared from an average $30 a megawatt two years ago to as much as $1,900 this spring, with no assurance they will not go even higher when the heat of summer hits. Davis accurately noted that federal law requires the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to maintain “just and reasonable” wholesale prices. This is not being done.

Davis often uses shrill exaggeration in attacking the Bush administration and the power companies. But Bush was disturbingly paternalistic toward California on Tuesday in telling us that we have to put aside politics and focus on the best interests of the people.

We’d like the White House to abide by that instruction as well.