By opposing the Nord Stream 2 and Keystone XL pipelines, the Biden administration is perpetuating one of Washington’s favorite pastimes: chasing plot devices to advance predictable narratives.

Alfred Hitchcock might call each of these intensely polarizing lines of steel pipe a “MacGuffin.” In Hollywood, the term applies to items such as suitcases full of powdery drugs, velvet pouches of sparkling diamonds, stray spheres of radioactive plutonium, and the occasional golden falcon statuette imported from Malta and encased in a layer of black enamel. A MacGuffin is, according to the dictionary, “an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.”