Even if you know this statistic it's worth repeating: In the mid 1970s, the last time we were in a dither about energy, we were getting a third of our petroleum from abroad. Now, decades later, we buy more than two thirds of it from overseas. As T. Boone Pickens says, it's the largest transfer of wealth in history, with the possible exception of the armadas of gold and silver the Spanish took home from the New World centuries ago.

The new "oil shock"—not an Arab oil embargo this time, but a scary run-up in the price of crude—has dragged us back to an old storyline and a confrontation with the monsters we failed to destroy decades ago. We're still using up our resources too fast, damaging the environment unnecessarily and becoming too dependent on others for our survival. This time, the challenges are even more difficult to deal with. China and India are growing too fast; oil producers are choking on dollars whose value they distrust; Russia and Venezuela (and some Muslim countries) are antagonistic, turbo-charged petroligarchies.

So where should we turn for inspiration and leadership? To Paris Hilton, of course!

I mention her not only because I am betting she looks better in a one-piece bathing suit than John McCain or even Barack Obama. No, we need Paris because her cheerful and sensible approach to the energy problem—encapsulated in her own poolside “ad"—is a lesson in leadership to the two "real" presidential candidates.

Paris's message: don't stress, don't dis each other's ideas, let's just try everything!

It doesn't get any smarter than that.

McCain and Obama, by contrast, are engaged in a phony war that refuses to accept the Hiltonian point: we need every tactic in this new energy war. We need all the production, conservation and research strategies we can imagine. Nothing should be belittled, or dismissed; everything should be attempted. We can't afford to think otherwise.

At the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival recently, I was struck by the fact that the captains of industry from Silicon Valley and the academic and journalistic muckety-mucks agreed on only one thing: we need to tackle the energy challenge with the urgency and imagination of the Manhattan Project and the Marshall Plan combined. Men and women who are paid to see over the horizon, and who have a good track record of doing so, said privately that we are a decade from ruin at best.

So what are McCain and Obama doing? Arguing about tire gauges and offshore drilling!