Fueling Gas Prices
Steven Rosenfeld is a senior editor for TomPaine.com.
The election year finger-pointing over high gas prices has begun"but will it amount to more than hot air?
This week, John Kerry blamed "George Bush and his friends at the Big Oil Companies" for price spikes Kerry says are costing families an "extra $30-$50 a week." Add to that an account from Bob Woodward's latest book that the White House had a deal with Saudi Arabia to increase oil production before the election to lower prices"which Kerry called "disgusting""and you have a full-on fight over a bread-and-butter issue"gas prices, and a big-picture battle as well"U.S. energy policy.
"If. . . it is true that gas supplies and prices in America are tied to the American election, tied to a secret White House deal, that is outrageous and unacceptable to the American people," Kerry said while campaigning in Florida on April 19. When a White House spokesman declined to deny the report in Woodward's book, Kerry pounced, attacking the president and saying he'd deliver energy independence from Arab oil in 10 years.
But is linking "Halliburton prices" and allegations of a sweetheart deal between the administration and the Saudis a smart populist fight for Kerry? Or is it too complicated an issue, one where the public will become numb by competing explanations and details over why gas is now so costly? Might there be another way to talk about the gas price increases and lay the problem squarely at the White House door?
The answer is yes"high oil prices have been made higher as a direct result of the Bush tax cuts and the administration's terrible fiscal record. How? Because all the red ink"from a record federal deficit from the tax cuts and the war"have weakened the dollar's buying power abroad. That may be good for U.S. companies that export, but a weak economic policy has produced a weak dollar and has inflated gas and oil prices.
"Gasoline and heating-oil prices in the U.S. are at an all-time high and rising. But it may surprise Americans to learn that in Europe, they've essentially remained steady," wrote Richard C. Leone and Bernard Wasow of the Century Foundation in a April 7 opinion piece in The Christian Science Monitor. "Experts have a lot of reasons to explain it, among them unrest in the Middle East, gas-guzzling cars and greed among oil-producing nations. But there is another culprit that is being ignored and that is making the problem far, far worse in the U.S.: the decline in the value of the dollar."
Leone and Wasow are correct on two points that directly relate to Kerry's latest attack. First, there are numerous reasons why gas prices are high"too many reasons and most of them are complex"which is only going to dilute Kerry's populist line of attack. As soon as people start hearing details"such as the Saudi Ambassador, Bandar Bin Sultan, who was on CNN's "Larry King Live" on April 19, and said White Houses have had similar understandings with the Saudis as far back as the 1970s"Kerry will lose credibility. His attack may be red meat for those already supporting his candidacy, but it will sound like a sloppy, oversimplification for undecided voters he needs to convince.
That leads to the second point by Leone and Wasow: there is one factor that's made a bad situation of high domestic fuel prices worse, and it is crystal clear: the U.S. dollar has lost value overseas as the federal deficit has grown. What caused the deficit? The Bush tax cuts and the pre-emptive military attack and occupation of Iraq.
Last fall's California recall election offers a useful reminder of which political attack strategy has more resonance: arguing over the cause of high fuel prices or making a case that the incumbent was a terrible fiscal manager, creating all kinds of problems"including an energy crisis.
Nobody on either side"neither then-Governor Gray Davis or his then-challenger, current Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger"could explain who was to blame for California's energy crisis. There were just too many causes, all of them complicated. On the other hand, Schwarzenneger made a clear case that Davis was a failed manager, neither foreseeing nor preventing nor stanching California's energy price crisis.
Kerry could say the gas price spike is only the start of Americans reaching into their pockets pay for the Bush administration's bad financial decisions. So far, he hasn't.
Click here to subscribe to our free e-mail dispatch and get the latest on what's new at TomPaine.com before everyone else! You can unsubscribe at any time and we will never distribute your information to any other entity.
Published: Apr 21 2004
