Chilly oil

IF BARACK OBAMA has to spend his final two years in office using his veto as often as his golf clubs, he will curse Alaska’s primary voters. On August 19th Republicans picked Dan Sullivan to run for the US Senate, a safer choice than Joe Miller, who wants to do to government what lumberjacks do to trees. Mr Miller’s unsuccessful Senate campaign in 2010 tested the limits of Alaska’s appetite for small-government populism, a cause that was not helped when his security team inadvertently handcuffed a reporter.