Pandering on Oil

In October, 1973 the fourth Arab-Israeli War broke out as Egypt and Syria launched surprise attacks on the Jewish High Holy Day of Yom Kippur. The Arab forces were initially triumphant, overwhelming the Israeli frontier positions and breaking through their lines. They were aided for the first time by a stunningly effective diplomatic achievement that added economic muscle to their cause: the imposition of an embargo on oil exports to countries supportive of Israel. OPEC had found its voice and marshaled its latent power. The industrialized world was put on notice that the days of cheap petroleum were over. The OPEC cartel soon quadrupled the price of oil and threw the Western World into recession. American politicians agreed on the urgent need for a national energy policy.

Thirty-five years later American politicians still agree the country ought to have a national energy policy. And, in one of the great derelictions of responsibility in modern times, it still does not. The United States is more dependent on imported oil than ever before and grows more so all the time. Oil sold for $26 a barrel in 2001 and stands at over $110 today. Gas prices hit $1 for the first time in 1979, $2 in 2004 and are nearing $4 in 2008. The rapid rise sends inflationary shock waves through the economy. Everything that has to be shipped costs more. Fertilizers, which are also made from petrochemicals, cost more, meaning that food does too. Rice is being rationed and food riots have broken out in over a dozen countries as staples have doubled in price in a year.

The need for domestically produced green renewable energy is desperate. Continued delay will present a devastating threat to the American standard of living. In this atmosphere it is disappointing indeed to see John McCain and Hillary Clinton pandering on the issue. McCain proposed and Clinton has embraced a plan to give the American public a "tax holiday" by suspending the collection of the federal 18.4 cent a gallon gasoline tax for the summer months. It is estimated that this would amount to an average $25 tax reduction for the average driver, about 1/2 of a tank of gas. It would also mean a $10 billion reduction for the National Highway Trust Fund that is financed by the gas tax.

The financial benefit to the public would be minuscule and the damage to the road maintenance program would be huge. But this idea is not about logic. It is about political appearances. McCain and Clinton wish to be seen as "doing something" about gas prices. The fact that the "something" is insignificant is not what is important to them. The fact that the idea fails to address the long-term cause of the high prices, namely the lack of a strategy to achieve energy self-sufficiency, is not important to them either. What is important to them is political pandering, pure and simple.

These are the kinds of band-aid bromides the American people have been handed for thirty-five years, thirty-five years of high-publicity, low-result grandstanding that leaves the nation a little more at the mercy of some of the world's most odious regimes every year and a few more hundred billion dollars in debt to another group of questionable regimes every year to pay the tab. We need a different kind of leadership, one that will face this problem squarely, one with the courage to level with the American people about the short-term sacrifices that will be necessary to achieve long-term relief from our need for foreign oil.

If oil doubles again in the next four years how will we be able to afford it? Where will our economy be then? The same old ruses pushed by the same old faces are no longer sufficient. We need truth and we need leadership, and we need them now.