TV Reviews : ‘Politics of Power’ a Gridlock Wake-Up

“The Politics of Power,” a magnificent collaboration between “Frontline” and the Center for Investigative Reporting (at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15; 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24), is ostensibly about hatched and smashed efforts at a U.S. energy independence strategy. But reporter Nick Kotz’s exploration into the dense tanglewood of conflicting regional, commercial and political interests takes him to an ogre’s castle filled with lobbyists and the traps of gridlock.

Why we don’t have a long-range energy plan, Kotz finds, is why incumbents are an endangered species this year.

“Power” shows in the starkest terms possible that, as with so much in the Reagan-Bush administrations, ideological concerns--in this case, loosening regulations on the “free hand” of oil and other energy industries--have squelched plans for a government-business partnership. Specifically, the Bush-appointed commission to study energy strategies, chaired by Adm. James Watkins, suggested remedies thoroughly at odds with the free-market politics of Bush’s economic advisers and then-Chief of Staff John Sununu.

Watkins’ group found that, as California has shown, energy efficiency and conservation are the quickest, surest ways to independence from foreign oil reserves. Sununu and company read this, however, as more government regulations. According to Kotz, so dominant was this view that it superseded even the deep concerns of Pentagon officials, who saw energy independence as a national security issue.

White House gridlock found its mirror twin in congressional gridlock, as competing energy strategies were whittled down by the grinding forces of lobby pressure and regional interests. Environmentalists opposed plans for oil drilling in Alaskan wilderness; powerful Michigan Congressman John Dingell, in tandem with auto industry concerns, helped defeat Nevada Sen. Richard Bryan’s efforts to set a fuel-efficiency standard of 40 miles per gallon; and well-funded nuclear industry lobbyists steered non-oil strategies toward nuclear power and away from less hazardous sources such as solar and wind.

“The Politics of Power” doesn’t merely explain murky policies and politics in clear terms, it goes that extra, investigative mile--such as including videotape showing how vulnerable the Congress-designated nuclear waste repository site at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is to earthquakes.