toledoblade.com --

WHEN your approval rating is only 14 percent, there's nowhere to go but up. Unless you're the Democrat-led Congress. A Rasmussen poll released Tuesday indicated the approval rating for Congress has declined by 36 percentage points from last year's "high." Just 9 percent of respondents said Congress was doing a "good" or "excellent" job, while 52 percent of us think it's doing a "poor" one. That's the lowest rating ever.

Much of the dissatisfaction with Congress is due to its unwillingness to do anything about the soaring price of gasoline. "Right now, our strategy on gas prices is 'Drive small cars and wait for the wind,'•" a Democratic congressional aide told The Hill newspaper.

"So why are the Republicans running scared, and why aren't they going after the 'new Democratic Congress' hammer and tongs?" wondered Web logger Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit. "Beats me. Because they're idiots, I guess."

I disagree. Some Republicans in Congress are crooks, and many are cowards. But few are idiots. For idiocy, you have to look to the campaign of Sen. John McCain.

Aware that something is wrong, Mr. Median has shaken up his campaign staff.

"He knows that his three-month general election head start, was largely frittered away," wrote New York Times columnist Bill Kristol. "He understands that his campaign has failed to develop an overarching message. Above all, McCain is painfully aware that he is being diminished by his own campaign."

If Mr. McCain wants to turn his floundering campaign around, he should heed the advice offered by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 14:8: "If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle?"

The most important thing to know about politics is that most people don't know much about politics - and care less. The candidate who can hammer home two or three themes that resonate with a majority usually wins.

But it takes mighty, repeated blows to knock through the wall of inattention. As Ronald Reagan put it, a successful candidate must paint "with bold colors, not pale pastels."

The winning theme is obvious. We're paying roughly twice as much for gas as we should have to pay because the Democrats in Congress won't let us develop our energy resources. Sen. Barack Obama opposes drilling for oil, mining for coal, building nuclear power plants. If he's elected president, gas prices will rise to $5 a gallon or higher.

Mr. McCain has said (for him) some remarkably sensible things recently about energy. He's for drilling off our coasts. He wants to build more nuclear power plants. He's one of the few members of Congress to have opposed from the get-go the biofuels fraud, which, according to a recent World Bank study, has forced up global food prices 75 percent while only negligibly reducing demand for oil.

Opinion polls show a large majority of Americans favor drilling off our coasts, and comfortable majorities favor drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve and building nuclear plants. A majority (even in Iowa!) now opposes ethanol mandates. Energy policy could be a game changer, as potent an issue for Republicans in 2008 as the war in Iraq was for Democrats in 2006.

But Mr. McCain has been Hamlet when he needs to be Henry V. He is discarding a strong hand through mixed messages and equivocation. He supports drilling on the outer continental shelf, but opposes it in ANWR. He backs a "cap and trade" program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that would devastate our economy. Nuance is important in policy-making, but can be disastrous in political campaigning. If the trumpet be uncertain …

Mr. McCain needs to decide, pronto, which is more important to him: Winning the election or receiving an occasional kind word from liberal pundits who will vote against him.

If he wants to win, Mr. McCain needs to demonstrate in a dramatic way he'll take every reasonable step to increase energy supplies - including drilling in ANWR.

And he needs to do it soon. The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin, who is from Barack Obama's home state of Illinois, said Wednesday: "I'm open to drilling and responsible production." Mr. Obama has altered his position on virtually every issue he campaigned on during the primaries. Could another flip-flop be in the offing?

"Durbin's comment may be a signal that Obama will pivot soon," said the Wall Street Journal's Jim Taranto.

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