Palin vows energy independence

US security depends on it, she tells crowd

Sarah Palin, with her husband, Todd, spoke yesterday at Bowling Green University in Ohio. Joe Wurzelbacher, also known as ''Joe the plumber'' of Holland, Ohio, campaigned with Palin for the first time at the event. (J.D. Pooley/Getty Images)

TOLEDO, Ohio - Giving her second major policy speech as the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin vowed yesterday to put the country on the path to energy independence, saying a "clean break" is needed from "30 years of failed policies in Washington" that relied too much on foreign oil.

"We certainly have the ingenuity. And if John McCain and I are elected, we will supply the political will to finally get it done," she said at Xunlight Corp., a solar power technology company that is a spinoff from the University of Toledo.

The issue is one on which she claims expertise as governor of Alaska and that John McCain has been emphasizing as a point of distinction from Democratic rival Barack Obama. Palin stressed the GOP ticket's willingness to take on powerful interests, mentioning Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who was convicted of corruption charges this week, as someone who fell victim to the influence of Big Oil money.

"Whatever the good ol' boys are running these days, I know it's not Alaska," she said. "And that's the kind of serious reform that we need in Washington, because the stakes for our country could not be higher."

While she promoted her advocacy of a $40 billion natural gas pipeline designed to link Alaska to the lower 48 states, questions have been raised recently about whether the bidding process was flawed and whether the pipeline will be finished.

Palin portrayed energy independence as a national security issue, noting the oil reserves and ambitions of unfriendly regimes such as Russia and Venezuela, and asserting that Middle East oil infrastructure is vulnerable to Al Qaeda and other terrorists.

Palin, whose first policy speech last week was about special-needs children, repeated the McCain mantra of expanding offshore oil drilling, nuclear power, and clean coal, as well as wind, solar, and other alternative energy.

And she criticized Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, accusing them of opposing energy sources for the United States that they support for other countries, while hiding behind concern for the environment. "As John McCain has observed, for a guy whose slogan is 'Yes, we can,' Barack Obama's energy plan sure has a whole lot of 'No, we can't.' "

Despite Palin's attempt to distance McCain's energy policies from those of the Bush administration, their priorities are largely similar, especially more domestic production. President Bush called for expanded offshore oil and gas drilling long before McCain reversed course to endorse the same this summer.

The Obama campaign responded with a statement from Ohio Governor Ted Strickland. "In a bit of rare straight talk, Sarah Palin attacked her own running mate's record today by blaming our oil addiction on '30 years of failure' in Washington, " Strickland said.

"John McCain was there for 26 of those years, during which he voted against alternative sources of energy and stood with oil industry lobbyists instead. Now he wants to give those oil companies an additional $4 billion in tax breaks, even as he proposes pennies for the kind of renewable energy that can end our dependence on Mideast oil and create new jobs."