On the Keystone Pipeline Decision

I have the following observations on the decision:

1. Obama clearly didn’t believe the hype from either side about the significance of the decision (for what it’s worth, I didn’t, either).  All of the sound and the fury worked to his advantage in that it created a more valuable bargaining chip.  He could have used it with the GOP to trade for concessions on the budget, but he ultimately decided that he would rather use it to bolster his position at the climate change meeting in Paris.
2. The timing of the long-postponed decision was clearly driven by the outcome of the Canadian election and the upcoming discussions on climate change.
3. If the result of the Canadian election had been different, or if oil prices had not collapsed, I suspect the pipeline would ultimately have been approved.  We’ll never know.