The ability to make solid judgment calls even when the options are bad – and sell those decisions without sugarcoating them – is what presidential leadership should be about. It’s what set George W. Bush apart right after Sept. 11, and why he’s been found wanting after this year’s Wall Street meltdown.

In 2009, few issues will test the leadership qualities of the presidential contenders better than how they tackle energy and environmental challenges within narrowed economic options. At a time of ballooning deficits, prolonged war tied to Middle East oil and rippling economic hurt from a housing meltdown, there are only hard choices.

No matter what the McCain-Palin camp suggests, Washington can’t solve the energy conundrum merely by more drilling. There is not enough U.S. oil to sate our growing national thirst or avoid more international price shocks.

Nor can this nation solve our needs solely with more nuclear energy plants. Among significant technological and practical obstacles, there simply is nowhere safe to dispose of the long-term waste, especially as worldwide proliferation risks become more acute. Climate change – including regional droughts and rising sea levels – could threaten existing plants’ cooling water supplies.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden is right that coal can’t seal the full deal either, despite its U.S. abundance. Yet there is no way to have a U.S. economy without coal.

That means Biden didn’t just get his play signals crossed when he blurted out in coal-rich Ohio this week that there would be “no coal plants here in America.” He was calling “Game over,” when the ball was still in midfield.

This presidential year, there finally is bipartisan consensus that global warming is a threat requiring urgent action and leadership from the White House. Both campaigns properly tout the opportunity green energy presents America to corner the global technological market on the next generation of clean cars and alternative energy. Both candidates support cap-and-trade proposals to make coal pollution credits a marketable commodity.

It’s a true moment of opportunity – a time when the scientific consensus favors urgent action to avoid potentially catastrophic shifts in climate patterns, and the Iraq war highlights the strategic dangers of mounting dependence on overseas oil.

Yet on the leadership-o-meter, both Barack Obama and John McCain score way down for one big campaign reason: Neither has pulled his expensive energy or environmental proposals off the table, or even modified them, to reflect the harsh new realities in the U.S. economy. Yet again, the voters may discover the true measure of these candidates’ leadership priorities only after one takes office.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama. What he’s proposing: The Democratic plank promises to help create 5 million clean-energy jobs “by strategically investing $150 billion over the next 10 years” and energy savings equivalent to the oil “we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined,” in part using 1 million made-in-America hybrid cars.

The context: After years of policy drift and a leadership vacuum in Washington, Obama has made energy reforms tied to technological innovations and environmental action one of the key tenets of his campaign. Yet Biden’s coal slip raises the troubling possibility that the price for stronger national environmental and energy stewardship in an Obama-Biden administration could be permanent second-class economic and political status for coal-reliant states.

Republican Sen. John McCain. What he’s proposing: McCain says he’ll “attack the problem on every front” with more offshore oil drilling, 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030, $2 billion invested in clean coal technology, and tax credits to encourage the increased “use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas” and more “flex-fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.”

The context: McCain, who’s long embodied what it meant to be a “GOP environmentalist” by pushing the long-term economic wisdom of pollution controls, now has the chance to set a bipartisan tone in energy, too. Most Americans also favor more offshore drilling and other strategic alternatives to ever-more-expensive imported oil. Yet in suggesting that his running mate, Sarah Palin, will be his point person on energy, McCain hints his energy policy in practice will be far less about “all of the above,” and far more about simply drilling for as much oil as possible in offshore U.S. waters.