Now, you can argue that energy independence is an impossible goal, you can argue that government intervention is the wrong way to go about it, and I'm as principled a free trader as you can get, but simply saying “Protectionism Bad. Free trade Good.” doesn't nothing to rebut their energy policy. It's like saying the candidates' education policy is bad because drugs should be legalized.

“It is important to understand that energy independence does not mean closed borders or economic isolation. Energy independence will be achieved by producing abundant, clean and affordable domestic energy through new technology that will enable all countries to do the same. The path to American Energy Independence leads to global energy independence.”
http://www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com

But ridiculing energy independence is, for many libertarians and so-called “conservatives,” just a way to pooh-pooh the many manifest benefits of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

Henderson acts as if people only make one valid argument for such a reduction: we might get cut off.

That is in fact one of the weakest arguments, one that the presidential candidates have never made, to my knowledge, and as such reveals it as Henderson's straw man and red herring.

Let him answer his opponents' strongest arguments, not their weakest ones, or the ones they rarely if ever deploy.

Yeah, except that for some reason “energy independence” for Sen. Obama extends to “we can't allow ourselves to become dependent on cheap Brazilian sugar ethanol.”