The U.S. presidential election, energy and saving America: In the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, one defining difference in the two major candidates was their approach to energy. Barack Obama promised green jobs and a cleantech-based manufacturing resurgence, and John McCain's supporters retorted "Drill, baby, drill." So far, the signs are that these themes will be reprised just as volubly four years later. For their part, the Republican candidates are pounding the table that, though faced with almost 9 percent unemployment, Obama is failing to tap a fail-safe job creator --the oil patch. So far, the cream of the U.S. energy braintrust is more in line with Republican thinking. This week, BP joined prior forecasts by Goldman Sachs, Edward Morse, Daniel Yergin and others in suggesting that the U.S. is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution based on a shift that, as far as I can tell, none of them was talking about until about four or five months ago.  At once, say these Wise Men, the U.S. along with the whole of the Western Hemisphere is about to be saturated in fresh oil reserves on top of the shale gas already in abundance. This fossil fuel bonanza - in the ultra-deepwater Gulf of Mexico, the shale of North Dakota, the sands of Canada and elsewhere -- will put millions to work, and activate a boom in energy-intensive industries, they say. In Alberta a few days ago, Citibank's Morse, the most formidable intellect in the bunch, described a generations-long, petro-driven economic boom built on petrochemicals, fertilizers, steel, housewares, pantyhose and more. Social thinker Joel Kotkin places these energy developments within a larger narrative that he calls "America's Moment." This group is battling it out for when it all begins, ranging somewhere in the next five to 30 years.

One Republican talking point is to scorn Obama's rejection of the 800,000-barrel-a-day Keystone bitumen pipeline from Canada to Texas. Here is Newt Gingrich, the winner of today's GOP primary in South Carolina (also pictured above):

Read on for more on American reindustrialization, and the rest of the Wrap.

Read on