Opinion: Poll: Yea or nay on Obama’s offshore-drilling decision?

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The Times’ editorial board will likely weigh in later today or Friday morning on President Obama’s decision to open more coastal waters in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Eastern Seaboard to oil and natural-gas exploration (environmental activist David Helvarg already opined against the plan on our Op-Ed pages). In the meantime, I’ll invite you to share your views on Obama’s action by taking our poll or posting your comments. Environmentalists, predictably, aren’t pleased with Obama’s decision, but Republicans aren’t exactly mollified either. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed doubts that the president would actually do the legwork needed to expand offshore-oil exploration; McConnell’s counterpart in the House, Rep. John Boehner, said the president didn’t go far enough. Obama dismissed his detractors in a way he does perhaps more formulaically than any other politician I can think of: He accused his critics on all sides of being intractable partisans, framing his position as the purely pragmatic alternative. From the New York Times:

‘Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates of the left and the right, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure all and those who would claim it has no place,” he said. “Because this issue is just too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles over and over again.’
What do you think about the president’s offshore-drilling decision? Does his plan toe the middle ground between environmentalists and the ‘drill, baby, drill’ crowd? Weigh in by taking our (unscientific) poll, leaving a comment or doing both.

-- Paul Thornton