I was taught at an early age to do three things with money: give, save, and spend wisely. I received one dollar every two weeks for allowance. As a result, twice a month our church was the proud recipient of 10 cents, one tenth of my take. I also succeeded at stashing some away in a savings account, and I found spending to be no problem at all, albeit not always wise.

It's because of these early lessons that I'm appauld at Obama's request to release 70 million barrels from the strategic petroleum reserve. It's like going back to my childhood lessons and urging me to give and spend from what I've saved--without any plan for replenishing what I use. It doesn't take long for even a child to understand that soon everything is gone and nothing remains for emergencies--except for the problem that brought about the move in the first place.

Let me explain a little about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). It's the world's largest supply of emergency crude oil. Its federally owned oil stocks are stored in huge underground salt caverns along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, and decisions to withdraw crude oil from the SPR are made by the president under the authorities of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. In the event of an energy emergency, SPR oil would be distributed by competitive sale. The SPR has been used under these circumstances only twice: during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Its formidable size of 700-plus million barrels makes it a significant deterrent to oil import cutoffs and a key tool of foreign policy.

Call me simplistic, but I believe we need to look elsewhere for answers to our energy problems. And if our presidential candidate can't do any better than this, he needs to look elsewhere, too, for things to talk about.