The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

The Administration was proceeding as though there was a crisis that would rally the nation; the public, however, did not think there was a crisis. And, in the course of pushing his program, Carter received a firsthand education in how special interests operate in the American system, including liberals, conservatives, oil producers, consumer groups, automobile companies, pro- and antinuclear activists, coal producers, utility companies and environmentalists—all with conflicting agendas. To Schlesinger, however, the issue was absolutely clear. The United States faced “a substantial long-run national problem.” He did not think that the world was about to run out of oil, but rather that the high growth rates in consumption that had supported economic development in the 1950s and 1960s could no longer be sustained. “We had to stop depending on crude oil for economic growth,” he would later explain. “We had to wean ourselves away.” Confident in his rigorous analysis of the issue, he was unprepared for the storm of debate and the bitterness of the ensuing battles. Sitting through one Congressional hearing after another, he came to recall a word of advice that an old veteran at the Atomic Energy Commission had given him when he was its chairman: “There are three kinds of lies—lies, damn lies, and energy lies.” Later, Schlesinger would say, “I have a sort of World War II mentality. If the President says something is in the national interest, I had assumed he would get a more suppo...