Mr. Obama's coal-burner

It was a tight squeeze, but the president got his photo op the other day, sitting at the wheel of a Chevy Volt to boost his administration's plan to oblige automakers to average 56 miles a gallon across their fleets of cars and trucks. Huh. What do you suppose the chances are that Mr. Obama will every actually drive a 56 mpg automobile, as opposed to the black SUVs with hidden machine guns that convoy him around every day?

The solution would be a Volt, I suppose, assuming it could be modified to a comfortable fit. If he returns to Chicago after his presidential tour is over, the $41,000 automobile would be powered in reality by electricity generated in--yes!--a coal-fired plant. That would seem to conflict with another of his pie-in-the-sky goals, that of a pollution-free environment. "If ever a president seems to have learned nothing from the times he's living in," writes Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal, "Barack Obama is it. Economies around the world are foundering from an accumulation of policy excesses produced by the sort of straight-line, robotic thinking he's applying to so-called corporate average fuel economy rules." Blue skies! -- Dan Ford