Obama and climate change legislation

President Obama has just spoken to the nation in his first address from the Oval office on the perils of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and has, according to this article in the Washington Independentdisappointed many (including one of the writers of the "Democracy in America" blog in their the live-streamed comments about the speech) by not calling for the passing of radical legislation to tackle climate change and polluting big-business in one fell swoop.

One can see the attraction of claiming the moral high ground in this area, but there is a significant problem as noted in this interesting article by Ezra Klein in the Washington Post - Presidents' involvement in policy polarises opinion (there's even a graph!):

To test this, Lee looked at "nonideological" issues -- that is to say, issues where the two sides didn't have clear positions. In the Senate, only 39 percent of those issues ended in party-line votes. But if the president took a position on the issue, that jumped to 56 percent. In other words, if the president proposed the "More Puppies Act," the minority is likely to suddenly discover it holds fervently pro-cat beliefs.

In other words for a climate bill to be passed by the Senate (the House passed one in June of last year) it has to have Republican support to get over the 60-seat filibuster-proof majority. That support from a few Republicans would be unlikely to happen if Obama decides to actively call for a bill to be passed. The Tea Party movement would probably consider any Senator a RINO.