Just as President Obama’s electoral fortunes were looking up, surging gas prices are threatening to derail the fragile economic recovery and, by extension, the president’s reelection hopes.
On Monday, the price of a barrel of crude oil surged to $105. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the Midwest rose to $3.41. In California, the statewide-average is just over $4, up 9 percent higher than last month and 5 percent higher than last week. Only in the president’s home town and location of Obama’s reelection team, Chicago, did gasoline prices decrease due to the release of local refineries winter blend ahead of the spring season. There, gas prices dropped 9 cents in the last week.
As the summer driving season approaches, gas prices are predicted to surge to unprecedented average highs.
Over the last month, President Obama has been enjoying a boost in his job approval rating. Today, the Real Clear Politics average of polls shows Obama in positive territory – 48.6 percent approval to 46.6 percent disapproval, the highest average for the president since the bump he experienced after the death of Osama bin Laden began to abate in early June, 2011.
The reasons for Obama’s rise in the polls are myriad and speculative; the Republican primary which has dragged all candidates and, by extension, the party’s image down and the economy beginning to show signs of life (or at least showing that the bleeding has stopped) are two potential benefits to Obama’s electoral prospects.
Few would suggest that the president or his team are directly responsible for Obama’s recent boost in the polls – although there are certainly a few partisans that believe the implementation of contraception mandates for religious institutions was wildly popular and picking that fight paid off dividends in public support. For those astute observers of the body politic, there are no words.
What is certain is that, whether the press focuses on it or not, gas prices are a primary metric for the average voter as to the state of the economy and the nation. In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry blamed President Bush for $1.80 average gas prices. The 15 percent increase under Bush’s first term was a major campaign issue. “Yesterday, gas prices soared to more than $2 a gallon, but this administration still has not done anything to help. Their inaction is costing working Americans their jobs, their savings and the opportunity to get ahead,” said Kerry on the campaign trail.
The price of gas was an election year in 2008 as well, although a muted one. Prices were on the decrease until the collapse of the mortgage market in September, 2008 which helped mute the issue.
“We need a President who is looking out for families in Indiana, not just multi-national corporations, and that’s the kind of President I intend to be,” Obama said of President Bush’s record on gas prices which were $3.60 per gallon in Indiana at the time – today, the average price of gas in the Hoosier state is $3.94.
Republicans took Obama to task for saying that he supported a “gradual increase” in the price of gas which would reduce consumption in order to reduce carbon emissions, but voters were more inclined at the time to trust Democrats on economic issues. The high prices in 2008 were thought to be an electoral boost to Obama’s election as a Democrat challenging the state of the nation under a Republican president. Today, that equation has been reversed.
Democrats say that Obama has no control over the price of gas and that Republicans who suggest that the media is biased in their non-reporting of the surging gas prices. Of course, the president does have some control over gas prices but those measures open to the president are politically toxic in a campaign year.
In June, 2011, President Obama released 30 million barrels of crude oil from the strategic reserves in order to ease the strain on prices that resulted from the disruption caused by the Arab Spring and the Libyan civil war. With Iran cutting off oil to Europe and continued disruptions in the Middle East driving up prices, oil is likely to rise but it is unlikely that an election year release of the strategic reserves.
As gas prices rise, Republicans are likely to make issue of the president’s pro-environmentalist blocking of domestic production initiatives like natural gas “fracking” permits and, of course, the rejection and loss of the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Obama will face a grassroots backlash on gas prices as they continue to rise. In an election year with the president facing many structural disadvantages, this could be one of the biggest.
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