What’s behind Pickens’ conversion?

It appears financier and oil-magnate-turned-green-energy-activist T. Boone Pickens has joined the growing ranks of former titans of industry who have recently succumbed to the mighty power of government interests.

The once-fiercely independent Pickens, who earned a reputation as a “corporate raider” during the 1980s with his aggressive takeovers and buyouts of several competing energy firms, has warmed up in the past couple of years to a prospect he would almost certainly never have contemplated in his younger days: Significant government intervention in the energy sector, with the goal of ending American consumption of foreign oil by replacing gasoline with American natural gas and then replacing natural gas with wind power.

Why the sudden change? It’s a puzzling question, and the answer isn’t abundantly clear.

Some would argue that Pickens has simply seen the light and come to the realization that American “dependence” on foreign oil is damaging to the environment, the United States’ economy and global security.

That may well be true, but a man as intelligent as Mr. Pickens surely realizes that the goal of “energy independence” is both as practical and desirable as “apparel independence” (or some other such nonsense); that Canada, not Saudi Arabia or some other bad actor, is our largest source of foreign energy; and that government dictates are as useful for converting whole economies from oil and natural gas to natural gas and wind as they are for equitably rationing fuel in an energy crisis and raising the living standard of the poor.

Sadly, the more likely explanation is that Pickens, like leaders in several other important industries, has realized that political trends are pointing toward a growing role for government in major sectors of the economy, from energy to health care and from banking to manufacturing.

He, like the CEOs of Wall Street firms, Big Pharma companies and Detroit’s GM and Chrysler, seems to have decided that instead of taking a principled stand against government intervention in their industries in favor of free markets and individual freedom, he’d prefer to play the game in hopes of bending the legislation in his favor.
To put it another way, Pickens and the others have seen that the power brokers in Washington have decided to feast on their industries and assumed their only choice is to be at the table or on the menu.

They forget at their peril the option of not throwing themselves into the oven to be cooked in the first place.