President to bake up crisp decisions, answer environmental issue

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal — his first newspaper interview since winning re-election — President Bush pledged to, among other things, renew the push for his long-stalled energy bill and aggressively promote nuclear power, saying he looked forward to “making good, crisp, sound decisions.” Bush spoke of nuclear energy in near-mystical terms, saying it “answers a lot of our issues,” including the “environmental issue” and the “dependency issue.” “It’s a renewable source of energy,” he said, which may come as news to many enviros. On the subject of his administration’s energy legislation, he said, “The price of energy is such that I don’t think any energy bill ought to provide that many incentives for people to go find oil and gas,” raising some doubt about whether he’s read the bill. Bush said he doesn’t mind the controversy and debate around his favored initiatives: “I mean, I think that’s part of how something gets baked.”