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How the power of oil dogged former presidents, and could tar Obama

...One president sealed his greatness with his handling of an oil crisis. Another was doomed by his inability to contain an oil crisis, scholars say.

President Eisenhower was the first president to warn the nation about oil in 1957, says James Hedtke, a history professor at Cabrini College in Radnor, Pennsylvania.

Other presidents delivered the same talk -- Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- but America's dependence on foreign oil continued to grow.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first president to grapple with an oil shortage in war time, says Jonathan Emord, a Washington attorney who has written publicly about Obama's cleanup efforts....
Read entire article at CNN