Credit: Pete Souza

Last year, members of the U.S. House of Representatives from opposing parties started pairing off on "dates" for the president's annual State of the Union address. The idea was to provide a simple and direct visual example of all-too-rare bipartisan comity -- to show any Americans who might happen to be watching that Republicans and Democrats could, in fact, get along well enough to sit next to each other for an hour and a half, at least. As the camera would pan out into the audience for reaction shots, you might see a well-known conservative and an avowed liberal seated right next to each other, instead of across the aisle from one another -- nodding together, whispering knowing comments into each other's ears, and subtly pressuring one another to be on their best behavior.  

The energy portion of last night's State of the Union speech, appropriately enough, was like a Hollywood film crafted especially for couples who can never seem to agree on what kind of movie to see on date night. She likes stories about huge increases in domestic oil production? She'll love the part in this one when President Obama brags of having "opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration,"  and then goes on to direct his administration "to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources." But wait: he likes movies that celebrate cleaner energy alternatives? Tell him not to get up and grab another tub of organic popcorn just yet -- the very next scene is all about the recent doubling of renewable energy sources, such as high-tech batteries and wind turbines. Does she absolutely adore fracking flicks? Well, this one's a heartwarming story about how "it was public research dollars, over the course of thirty years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock." Would he rather stay at home and re-arrange his sock drawer than sit through a movie that glorified fracking? Don't fret, my friend: in the very next scene, the stern-faced president is "requiring all companies that drill for gas on public lands to disclose the chemicals they use. America will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk."

It's hard to make a genre-busting movie like this one. Critics are apt to complain that the story line lacks focus, that it's trying too hard to be all things to all people, and sacrificing narrative plausibility as it does so. And there may be something to that line of criticism. To hear President Obama boast, as he did last night, that "American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years" in one scene, only to issue an ultimatum to Big Oil in the next ("We have subsidized oil companies for a century; that’s long enough") is to wonder whether you're watching a delightful romantic comedy where drillers and presidential administrations "meet cute," or an action movie where coddled petroleum giants finally get their comeuppance at the hands of a fed-up, mad-as-hell chief executive.

And indeed, at least one critic on the right -- Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana -- could be heard grumbling loudly after the closing credits. In the official GOP response to the President's speech, Daniels averred that "[t]he extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy." (Come to think of it, Daniels' allusion to the nixed Keystone XL pipeline project as something that would employ "tens of thousands" might make for a good movie itself -- in the science fiction/fantasy category. The actual number of permanent jobs that would be created, according to the State Department, is as low as a few hundred.) Meanwhile, over on the left, journalist Kevin Drum, blogging for Mother Jones, mocked the president's "all-of-the-above" energy policy as just one example of this "campaign speech on steroids."

But here's the thing: This movie ain't actually over yet. Daniels may not like what he perceives (correctly or not) to be its underlying message; Drum may think that it's hollow and pandering. But there's still a chance that all these disparate plot threads could cohere into a rewarding story about bountiful natural gas that delivers on its very real promise of replacing dirty coal in a manner that's both safe and transparent -- which is to say, in a manner that allows state and federal regulators to ensure that water supplies are protected. In this script, too, the green innovations touted by President Obama start to generate real excitement and attract real capital, based on the incontestable knowledge that oil -- whether imported or produced domestically -- can't last forever, but that wind and sunlight can. The stirring climax of this Oscar-worthy feel-good movie sees the American economy rebounding vigorously, thanks in part to serious investment in domestic renewables, which grant us a competitive advantage in the global arena.

In one sense, Drum is right: This year's State of the Union address was a campaign speech, as are all State of the Union addresses that take place during re-election years. The president wanted, and needed, to give any Republicans and Democrats who were out on a date last night something they could both like. He risked not making the sale with either of them. But if people who care about things like replacing oil and coal with sustainable energy sources -- or making sure that natural gas production doesn't come at the expense of safe drinking water or wildlife habitat -- demand the final cut, we can make this movie end however we want it to.