It might have been hard to think straight over the noise of relocating office furniture in the West Wing over the past few days, so we’re inclined to give President Bush a do-over for his major energy policy speech yesterday. After all, the address was so off target that Mr. Bush, who otherwise has a pretty good track record championing free markets, can’t possibly have read it carefully before he delivered it. If he had, he would have caught himself before uttering an oration that won plaudits from none other than Senator Kerry, who crowed afterward that “For a moment, President Bush finally stopped talking like an oil company executive.”

For example, right off the bat Mr. Bush swung and missed in congratulating his audience, which just happened to be a meeting of the Renewable Fuels Association, for “growing America’s energy security.” Erred he: “I like the idea of policy that combines agriculture and modern science with the energy needs of the American people. I’m here to talk to you about the contributions you are making, and I’m here to talk to you about the need for this country to get off our dependency of oil.” That’s an odd position to take just as ethanol shortages are constricting gas supplies and driving up prices at the pump, when gas is even available – since the congressionally mandated shift to ethanol is also causing spot shortages in parts of the country.

Even more troubling, Mr. Bush seemed at times to be buying into Democratic cant about evil oil companies. Quoth the president: “I’m also directing the Department of Justice to work with the FTC and the Energy Department to conduct inquiries into illegal manipulation or cheating related to the current gasoline prices.” And there’s more: “To reduce gas prices, our energy companies have got a role to play. Listen, at record prices, these energy companies have got large cash flows, and they need to reinvest those cash flows into expanding refining capacity, or researching alternative energy sources, or developing new technologies, or expanding production in environmentally friendly ways. That’s what the American people expect. We expect there to be strong reinvestment to help us with our economic security needs and our national security needs.”

Statements like those are different only in degree, but not in substance, from what Americans heard from Senators Kerry and Schumer yesterday about how the president needs to “get tough on big oil.” Mr. Schumer and other Democrats charge price-fixing or gouging or any number of other conspiracies among oil companies to keep prices high. Although it was less colorful, Mr. Bush’s rhetoric was imbued with the same suspicion that big oil is operating against the best interests of Americans. Since when is profiting from market trends, like any company tries to, un-American, particularly when high prices are more the result of national energy policies than of private sector action?

Worried about lack of reinvestment? Why would any sane executive try to make his company even more profitable through new investment if those “excess” profits would end up being called a “windfall” and confiscated? If Mr. Bush sticks by that line, he will next have to explain just how much reinvestment is enough, how much research is enough, or what constitutes an environmentally friendly way to expand production. The president called yesterday for eliminating tax breaks that encourage oil exploration, citing already high oil company profits. As, incidentally, did Senator Kerry, in a bill introduced yesterday afternoon. And here we were, thinking all through 2004 that there was a difference between the two candidates.

There were bright spots in Mr. Bush’s speech. For example, he’s on the right track when he calls for relaxing some of the environmental rules that effectively constrict gas supplies and pushes for a reduction in the number of “boutique fuel” environmental requirements. He will also suspend deposits to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, easing some of the demand-side pressure in the market; he will not, however, bow to Mr. Schumer’s all-too-frequent demand to release some of that reserve. So in these respects, he avoids a gimmicky, fleeting “solution” to the nation’s energy woes. Yet the president inexplicably abandoned such free-market principles for much of his energy address, leaving Americans wondering whether anyone in Washington is interested in solving the problem instead of political pandering.