Back in the summer of 2001, Jonah Goldberg did something that almost no one who utters the acronym ANWR in hushed, reverent tones has actually done. He visited there:

I suspect that the majority of Americans who oppose oil exploration in ANWR would agree with me if they saw it firsthand. Indeed, they would probably agree that if America had to be struck by an asteroid, this would be the ideal impact point. Of course, I am not talking about ANWR's beautiful mountain vistas, the ones cooed over by cable-news hostesses. Not only is that stuff legally protected from oil exploration, it is far, far away from anywhere the oil companies want to drill-i.e., the thousands of football fields' worth of bog and marsh.

Today, he reminds us that it's still waiting to be put to use:

Sen. John McCain said this week he would not drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the same reason he “would not drill in the Grand Canyon ... I believe this area should be kept pristine.”

Pristine means unspoiled, virginal, in an original state.

One wonders how pristine the Grand Canyon can be if it has roughly 5 million visitors every year, rafting, hiking, picnicking, and riding mules up one side and down the other. Campfires, RVs, and motels that do not conjure the word “virginal” ring around large swaths of it.

This isn’t to say that the Grand Canyon isn’t a beautiful place; it inspires awe among those who visit it. ANWR (pronounced “AN-wahr”) inspires awe almost entirely in those who haven’t been there. It is an environmental Brigadoon or Shangri-La, a fabled land almost no one will ever see. That is its appeal. People like the idea that there are still Edens “out there” even if they will never, ever see them.

Indeed, if Americans could visit the north coast of Alaska, as I have, as easily as they can visit the Grand Canyon, the oil would be flowing by now.

ANWR is roughly the size of South Carolina, and it is spectacular. However, the area where, according to Department of Interior estimates, some 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil reside is much smaller and not necessarily as awe-inspiring. It would amount to the size of Dulles airport.

Question for McCain: Has South Carolina been ruined because it has an airport?

Most of the images of the proposed drilling area that people see on the evening news are misleading precisely because they tend to show the glorious parts of ANWR, even though that’s not where the drilling would take place. Even when they position their cameras in the right location, producers tend to point them in the wrong direction. They point them south, toward the Brooks mountain range, rather than north, across the coastal plain where the drilling would be.

As James Lileks notes, who'd have thought that, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, that America would remain in such stasis when it comes to energy independence:

It’s not that we cannot produce any more oil; you suspect that some are motivated by the belief, perverse as it sounds, that we should not. We should not drill 50 miles off shore on the chance someone in Malibu takes a hot-air balloon up 1000 feet and uses a telephoto lens to scan the horizon for oil platforms. Also, there are ecological concerns. (The ocean is a wee place, easily disturbed.) There’s something else that may well be my imagination, but I can’t quite shake the feeling: high gas prices and shortages of oil make some people feel good. This is the way it has to be. Oil is bad. Cars are bad. Cars make suburbs possible. Suburbs are the antithesis of the way we should live, which is stacked upon one another in dense blocks tied together by happy whirring trains. So some guy who drives to work alone has to spend more money for the privilege of being alone in his car listening to hate radio?

Good.

Yes, I know, projection and demonizaton and oversimplification. But this is true: there’s a side of the domestic political structure that opposes expansion of domestic energy production, be it drilling or nukes or more refineries.

And speaking of that "hate radio":

[The MSM] called you the maverick! But guess what? Now you're not a maverick. Why, you're Bush 3! That's like the worst thing a maverick could be called, is Bush 3. Get ready, Senator. This is only the tip of the iceberg of all the ammo they have aimed and trained on you. Here's what I'm hoping, ladies and gentlemen. I'm hoping at some point relatively soon McCain gets ticked off enough about this that he comes to his senses on the issue of energy independence in this country. Do you realize that if you look at any poll out there taken of the American people, they want energy independence? They want drilling for our own energy supplies. They want nuclear. They don't want all of this Kyoto stuff. They don't want taxes to go up. They don't want the price of gas to go up even a penny by 60 some odd percent, if the purpose of the increase is to fight global warming. They want cheaper gasoline, and they know how to get it. This is an issue. It is an issue made to order.
Now, McCain has changed his mind on a couple things. This would be a goody. This would be a huge one. Somebody could get to Senator McCain and say, Senator, you want to win this election? You want to contrast who you are with Senator Obama and the leftists in the Democrat Party? Here's your issue. "Drill here. Drill now. Energy independence." Start now and get on this, and I'm telling you, he would see a miraculous thing happen in his campaign. But I don't know who can tell him these things. It's just a sitting duck.

And it's one that another senator, who may be looking to overcome what Ace accurately described as a Kinsley-esque gaffe of the first order might also be looking to exploit if he wanted to (a) get to the right of McCain on one key issue very quickly, JFK-style (Mr. President, we cannot afford a domestic oil gap!), and (b) simultaneously generate a pretty nifty Sister Souljah moment with his enviro-stasis base.

Will it happen? Probably not, but the first man who heads north to Alaska and hops on a podium in front of a phalanx of legacy journalists and an armada of cable and network cameramen in the middle of that Vast Pestilential Wasteland and does an about-face on the issue has a damn good chance of winning it all in November.*

Who wants it bad enough that he's actually willing to accede to the wishes of the American public?

* And much like Kennedy and his fabled missile gap, or Clinton and his fantasy middle class tax cut, "Americans' memories being what they are these days, [Obama would] never even have to follow through if he wins. (And the media certainly wouldn't call him on it)", as a reader of the Corner emailed in today.