A bridge to the 20th century

I'm an independent. I'm not registered to any party (yet) so my options are much broader than most when it comes to presidential candidates. While the rest of you are stuck with whatever the restaurant happens to put out for the lunch buffet, I take my candidates ala carte. My presidential litmus test this time around is clean energy. I've given up on the Iraq war because no candidate seems to want to end the killing any time soon. So I concentrate on which candidate will be the most likely to see the 21st Century logic that there are alternatives to digging fossilized material out the ground and setting it on fire for our energy needs. Sounds downright ridiculous when I put it that way, doesn't it? So the last presidential candidate I thought I would be scratching off my list this early would be the young, hip guy right? So this morning my coffee-spitting moment came when I read this article. The headline wasn't that shocking, although "fuel efficiency" is a dubious phrase because it doesn't exactly ring like "eliminate our dependence on oil." The real disappointment lies within. Senator Barack Obama is going to "help bring (the auto industry) it into the 21st century." How? By demanding a 4% per year increase in fuel economy so the standard will be 40 mpg... By the year 2022! So if Obama is the young, progressive candidate, what does that leave me to choose from? Is John McCain going to come out and demand steam locomotives get more miles from a stick of firewood? Will Hillary Clinton propose more efficient refining of whale oil for our lamps? Hey maybe Fred Thompson will encourage more nutritious feed so our draft horses can pull bigger wagons.