A headline in the National Journal online edition asks: Why won’t Obama visit North Dakota?

It’s a valid question, given the oil boom that’s changing North Dakota and beginning to change the nation’s energy strategy.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/why-won-t-obama-visit-north-dakota-20130825

But I can answer the question posed by the headline and the article written by the Journal’s Amy Harder. He won’t go there for the same reason he doesn’t come to West Texas. There’s no political advantage for the president.

What’s more, West Texas is resuming its own energy boom, in the Permian Basin, not to mention the growth of the wind-energy industry throughout the Panhandle.

Presidents, though, are the supreme political animals. Democratic presidents quite often don’t bother coming to regions of the country where they lack popular support. That would be, um, West Texas and North Dakota.

Conversely, do Republican presidents spend a lot of time visiting places such as, say, the Bay Area of California, or Boston, or the Pacific Northwest? Hardly.

Frankly, I think quite a few West Texans — not to mention North Dakotans — would appreciate a presidential visit to talk up the industries that are fueling our manufacturing might and keeping our vehicles on the road.

And I also believe a Democratic president could get a warm welcome here. Do you remember the reception another very high-profile Democrat — one William Jefferson Clinton — got when he came to Amarillo in 2008 to campaign for his wife, then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination? The Civic Center’s Grand Plaza Ballroom was packed beyond capacity.

The nation’s energy future is, indeed, changing, as the National Journal article points out.

A presidential visit would be a welcome event to call attention to the hard work that’s under way out here in Flyover Country.