Oops, what I meant to drive was...

Barack Obama showed up for a sparsely-attended news conference in Brentwood Tuesday to outline his plans to reduce greenhouse gases. The scene was a gas station that sells fuel made from vegetable oils. Good so far.

Trouble was he drove up in one of those big hulking SUVs that political campaigns (and the Secret Service) are so fond of driving. "When I'm president," Obama said, "any vehicle purchased by the federal government" will have a flexible fuel system that can run on ethanol. "Government should lead the way," he said.

His stop in Brentwood, meant to underline his green credentials, came on a day when Obama quietly backtracked on his longheld support for a controversial plan to promote the use of coal, as Peter Wallsten explains in a Times story this morning.

According to The Times' Seema Mehta at the Brentwood gas station, Obama acknowledged he is behind Hillary Clinton by double-digits in this weeks Times Poll. "These polls are going to fluctuate and gyrate," he said. But he predicted a good showing in next month's quarterly campaign fundraising reports.

"We haven't gotten into the guts of this campaign," Obama said. "That will happen after Labor Day."

Whatever happened to starting campaigns after Labor Day of the election year, not the year before?

--Andrew Malcolm

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