Energy security and the related economic and environmental issues should be the most important topic of the 2008 presidential election. I say this deliberately, notwithstanding such immediate issues as the war in Iraq and the economy, or longer-term matters like deficit reduction, healthcare and social security.

I say this even in the context of my own longstanding evangelism for non-proliferation and arms reduction, issues that I believe have not diminished in importance.

Whoever is sworn in as president in 2009 must elevate energy security to the status of a core national goal and must directly engage the American people in the solution. If the next president addresses energy through the same old ideological prism, the chance to strengthen U.S. national security and economic prosperity will be lost.

To succeed, the president must be constantly attentive to energy concerns. He or she must be relentless, willing to stake the reputation of the administration on politically difficult breakthroughs that contribute to U.S. energy security. The president must be willing to be judged according to success or failure on this issue.

The same applies to the leaders of both parties in Congress.

This will involve considerable political risk. The safer course is for leaders to appear to be forward-looking on energy by proposing a few carefully chosen initiatives and occasionally voicing optimistic rhetoric about alternative sources.

Washington believes that the public’s overwhelming energy concern is high gas prices, and that politicians can cover their political bases by being attentive to that issue.

The next president and the Congress must reject such a defensive posture. The president must operate outside the energy orthodoxy of his or her party, and avoid the temptation to go for popular, quick-fix nostrums, such as cutting gasoline taxes or tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce gas prices, in place of a true energy security program.

The president and the Congress must be willing to reject subservience to the major energy and environmental lobbying groups.

It is not enough to ask presidential candidates which energy solutions they prefer or what legislation they will endorse.

The real question is: “How deep is your commitment to changing the fundamental energy equation of the United States?”

Already the Democratic and Republican candidates are at risk of locking themselves into established party positions. As The New York Times noted recently, “On oil, the parties fall into two camps: use less or find more.”

The Republicans’ traditional laissez-faire approach is insufficient for bringing innovation and dramatic volumes of alternative fuels to market quickly enough to meet looming energy challenges. It also fails to recognize that with roughly 80 percent of the world’s oil supply controlled by state oil companies, the global energy market is not free.

In this context, mandates requiring production of flex-fuel vehicles, installation of E-85 pumps and higher CAFE standards are justified in the interest of national security.

The Democratic tendency toward green idealism is often divorced from energy reality. While climate change requires international action and U.S. leadership, climate policies have to be synchronized with a sober evaluation of what is possible globally. Given the voracious demand for energy from rapidly growing countries like India and China, arbitrary targets for cutting global greenhouse gases will be quickly overwhelmed without rapid breakthroughs in energy technology and much greater global coordination.

Some Democrats have taken nuclear power, coal and increased oil exploration off the table. Yet coal is our single largest source of electric power. We must aggressively pursue technologies to capture and store or use greenhouse gases. Our extreme vulnerability to the machinations of unfriendly oil-rich nations means we must try at least to maintain domestic supplies through continued exploration. And in a world of rapidly expanding carbon emissions, nuclear power offers one of the few abundant solutions and therefore we must continue to make progress on safety and waste issues.

A credible energy security agenda demands that we break free from partisan divisions. At its core, energy security is a political problem. We have the money, know-how, land and industrial capacity to address our energy vulnerability. This election will determine whether we get the leadership and the political will to deal with the problem now, rather than suffering grave consequences in the future.

Lugar is ranking member of the House Foreign Relations Committee.