Lucy's holding the football...

And President Charlie Brown is--again--running full-tilt for the kickoff:

 

Reversing a ban on oil drilling off most U.S. shores, President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced an expansive new policy that could put oil and natural gas platforms in waters along the southern Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and part of Alaska.

 

...Obama made no secret of the fact that one factor in his decision was securing Republican support for a sweeping climate change bill that has languished in Congress. But Obama has long stated his support in favor of the "tough decision" to expand offshore drilling.

 

Seriously?

 

How can anyone who's been paying the slightest bit of attention to the events of the past 14 months--much less the guy who's found himself lying flat on his back, staring up at the sky, time and time again--think that that part of the calculus has any chance of working out?

 

You're, once again, backing off a position you campaigned upon.  Chalk it up to new information, the alleged year of study, whatever you want.  After all, we complained for the last eight years about a President who was too stubborn to change course in response to evolving circumstances.  But, for the love of God, even if pandering to the GOP is, inexplicably, still part of your strategy, why publicize it?  All you're doing is positioning things so that your constituents (You remember them, right?  They're the ones who actually will support you.) not only think you took them for their votes and then threw them under the bus, but did so in the starry-eyed pursuit of bipartisanship that your opponents have commited themselves to denying?