Sunday, 9/21.
Sundays are just another day of meetings on the road to Energy Independence. We started with meeting with CNN and ABC News commentator Donna Brazile. Donna is from New Orleans—still has family there—and says she understands why drilling is important, but she likes the Pickens Plan because the energy issue is too big and too important to be solved by just one answer.
She told me that she had been following this pretty closely, and that I’m “the only one with a plan.” Donna has been around Washington a long time—she ran Al Gore’s Presidential campaign in 2000, and is held in pretty high regard by folks on both sides of the aisle.
We talked about the notion that that for the next 40+ days, all members of Congress and a third of the Senators who are up for re-election are totally focused on November 4—election day—and we need to keep the pressure on the Congress so they are ready to roll up their sleeves and go to work right after the election.
After my meeting with Donna I went over to have lunch with Bob Schieffer, who had just finished his weekly “Face the Nation” program. Bob is a Texas guy—he got his start writing for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram—and he isn’t shy about looking a guy in the eye and asking, “How is this going to work?”
We talked about the Pickens Plan for the better part of two hours. Bob is a traditional news man—not just a studio host who has his job because he can read a TelePrompter. He took notes on his yellow legal pad the whole times, including when the food came!
Bob is going to be one of the three moderators of the Presidential debates, so he thought it was important that he understood the energy situation from a guy who has actually been in the energy business—not just somebody who lobbies for the oil companies, which is what you usually get in Washington.
My final meeting of the day was with former Senator Bob Dole. Bob is about five years older than I am, so I offered him his choice of seats at the table. As you know, he is a hero of World War II, and has been a serious presence in Washington for a long, long time.
Dole gives a lot of speeches and makes a lot of appearances around the country. He told me that energy is one of the top issues people talk about, and that “everyone has heard of the Pickens Plan.”
There are maybe three or four guys who understand the way the United States Senate works as well as Bob Dole, so I thought it was important that we sit down and talk about how we can utilize the New Energy Army most efficiently between now and election day, and in the period between November 4 and the day the new Congress convenes on or about January 30, 2009.
One of the things we are doing in this deal is bringing as many people to the table as possible. Sunday was a perfect example.
—Boone
