Beyond the Dome

Barack Obama came awfully close today — through one of his surrogates — to endorsing the bipartisan “Gang of 10” energy compromise plan that includes offshore oil drilling.

It’s not that Obama addressed the compromise directly. It was more of an implied embrace. His campaign sent out former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, briefly a presidential candidate himself, to bash John McCain for rejecting the plan. In a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Vilsack said McCain’s refusal to support the plan proves the Republican nominee-in-waiting has been “lock, stock and barrel by the oil industry,” since the plan would be funded in part by trimming tax breaks for the oil industry.

The conference call was timed to allow the Obama campaign to take a swipe at McCain’s visit to an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico this morning to promote his plan to lift the ban on offshore drilling.

But Vilsack wouldn’t go so far as to say Obama supports the “Gang of 10” plan — which was, of course, the inevitable question. “I’ve not specifically talked to Senator Obama today about his position,” Vilsack said. Instead, he just repeated what Obama has already said: that he likes the bipartisan nature of the group, led by Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, and that he likes the “comprehensive approach” the group came up with, especially its incentives to develop alternative sources of energy.

Obama took some heat earlier this month when, in an effort to praise the newly released plan, he seemed to back away from his opposition to offshore drilling. On Aug. 1, the day the plan was released, Obama told the St. Petersburg Times that “if it is part of an overarching package, then I am not going to be rigid in preventing an energy package that goes forward that is really thoughtful and is going to really solve the problem.”

Later, Obama tried to return to his criticism of offshore drilling without ruling it out entirely. “While increased domestic oil exploration certainly has its place as we make our economy more fuel-efficient and transition to other, renewable, American-made sources of energy, it is not the solution,” he said in Youngstown, Ohio, on Aug. 5. “It is a political answer of the sort Washington has given us for three decades.”

And that may be all we’re going to get out of Obama for a while on the “Gang of 10” energy plan. Just to be clear, though: He’s opposed to opposing the plan.