BARACK OBAMA’S campaign slogan, “Yes we can,” has a distinctly American ring. It brings back memories of the famous “Can do” motto of the Navy’s Seabees during World War II.

The first Seabees were mostly older men from the construction trades who had built dams, bridges and skyscrapers in less time than it takes to get all the required permits today.

The ultimate technological triumph of that era, however, was the Manhattan Project, which produced the atomic bomb. Recognizing that triumph, House Democrats announced in 2005 their intention to undertake a “New Manhattan Project” to promote energy independence.

Using the Manhattan Project as a model makes sense in terms of the level of effort that will be required to free the United States from its reliance on foreign energy. When a serious effort to build a bomb began, in 1942, most leading physicists accepted the theoretical possibility of such a weapon. The issue of whether theory could be translated into reality, however, was hotly disputed.

The choices that confronted the bomb builders were almost endless. They could use either uranium or plutonium, and there were several possible ways to enrich uranium if that path were chosen. There were also two distinct ways to construct the bomb mechanically. The builders decided to move forward with all possibilities simultaneously.

A similar approach would work well for any new Manhattan Project for energy. The problem is fundamentally one of supply and demand. With certain exceptions, Republicans want to let market forces increase supply. Democrats, on the other hand, want to use taxation and government regulation to lower demand.

As it was with the atomic bomb, the best way to proceed toward energy independence would be to exploit all the possibilities, which means producing more and conserving more. Unfortunately, when it comes to producing more, “yes we can” quickly becomes “no you can’t.”

The United States has sizeable oil reserves offshore and in Alaska that are currently off limits to exploration and drilling. So far, the Democrat-controlled Congress has refused to remove the restrictions. One of the many explanations for that position is that results would not be seen for years after restrictions were lifted, maybe not until 2030.

That sure doesn’t sound like the engineers and drillers I knew when I was getting my degree in geological engineering at the University of Oklahoma in the 1950s. The men I knew then were men like the ones who put out the Kuwaiti oil fires in a much shorter time than the “no you can’t” crowd said was possible.

Reporting on the hundreds of oil wells that Iraqi troops torched as they retreated from Kuwait, The New York Times warned in March 1991 of a pending worldwide ecological catastrophe and quoted one expert’s estimate of “anywhere from five to seven years” to extinguish all the fires. But on Nov. 7 that year, The Times reported the capping of the last burning well and noted that “the job took eight months, less time than almost anyone expected, at less expense in lives and money, and with very few technical innovations.”

Performance like that convinces me that a new Manhattan Project could solve our energy problems much faster than the pessimists think if American engineers, scientists and workers weren’t continually told “no you can’t.” If you don’t want to drill for our own oil, there are dozens of other possibilities.

Shale in the American west has more estimated oil than the Saudi Arabians have, but exploitation of that resource is blocked by federal and state regulations. China, Brazil, and Estonia currently produce oil from shale. The United States? “No you can’t.”

The United States has the world’s greatest reserves of coal, reserves that could be used directly or converted into synthetic fuels. Every week or so, China opens a new coal-fired power plant, and other nations are producing synthetic fuel from coal. But for Americans it’s “No you can’t.”

If you object to oil and coal because they produce too large a “carbon footprint,” there are other choices. Nuclear power has let the French not only meet their domestic needs for electricity but to become an exporter of electric power. Try to build a nuclear plant in the United States today. “No you can’t.”

We are constantly admonished to rely on renewable sources, such as wind and solar, but look what happens to those who try. Cape Wind Associates has been trying since 2001 to get permission to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The result so far? “No you can’t, at least not where I have to look at it.”

Even solar power faces big challenges. In May, the Bureau of Land Management ordered a two-year moratorium on solar projects on public lands so that their impact could be studied further. It did, however, call off the moratorium last week.

If you work at it, you can find a plausible reason to fight every possible way to produce more energy. Doing so while trying to blame big oil or greedy speculators for $4-a-gallon gasoline, however, is nothing but election-year demagoguery.

An attitude of “yes we can” is essential to solving problems, but it won’t work if the response to every possible solution is “no you can’t.”

Col. Theodore L. Gatchel (USMC Ret.), a monthly contributor, is a military historian and a professor of operations at the Naval War College. The views here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Naval War College, the Navy or the Department of Defense.