On Thursday, President Obama delivered his second speech in a week
addressing rising gas prices and telling his audience that there is no “sliver
bullet” to bring down gas prices. He added that his Republican opponents who
suggest that the United States could drill its way out of this crisis are being
mendacious.
Obama’s focus on rising gas prices, and his administration’s
repeated calls to eliminate tax subsidies to gas and oil companies that help
fund exploration, betray the White House’s understanding that rising pump
prices could imperil his reelection chances. But while the president seems
aware of the political peril that rising gas prices represent to his electoral
chances, Republicans (with the exception of Newt Gingrich, who has made gas
prices a centerpiece of his campaign) have not yet begun to focus on this
issue.
Gas prices as a metric of consumer confidence have a long track
record of driving down presidential approval numbers.
President Obama made a big issue of rising gas prices before the
bottom fell out of the housing market in 2008. He described President Bush’s
oil policy and the rapidly rising gas prices in the summer
of 2008 as “the tyranny of
oil in our time.”
During the 2004 election, rising gas prices were the subject of
coordinated attacks on President Bush by the Democratic National Committee. DNC
Chairman Terry McAuliffe routinely attacked the president for his links to the
Texas oil industry – inferring that high gas prices were a preferential policy
of his administration to help his political allies profit.
"The
Bush administration is in the pocket of big oil, and it is hurting Americans in
the pocketbook," McAuliffe said in 2004.
"They are so deep in the pocket of big oil, we need to drill down just to
find them."
The attacks on Bush over prices at the pump did not affect this
loss on Election Day, but it did not take long for gas prices to catch up to
Bush’s job approval rating.
A 2005
CBS News poll (which asked voters their opinions of the “gas/oil crisis” at
a time when the national average hovered around $2.50/gallon)
directly correlated President Bush’s rapidly falling job approval numbers with the
price of gas. Their findings were echoed in an ABC
News poll from the same period.
Of course, the history of gas-prices-as-campaign-issue goes back
much farther than that. In 2000, George W. Bush attacked Al Gore and the
Clinton administration for rising gas prices. Gore’s campaign responded with the
familiar charge that Bush himself profited from gas price hikes ($2.26/gallon
average).
The prices of gasoline and heating oil was the dominant issue of
the 1980 election campaign and many attribute President Carter’s loss to Ronald
Reagan to high pump prices ($3.37/gallon average)
Of course, gas prices rising or falling do not directly relate to
an incumbent party’s victory or defeat at the polls.
George H. W. Bush lost reelection in 1992 even as gas prices
declined to pre-OPEC crisis levels. In fact, a study by Nate Silver in the New
York Times from last year shows that there is really little direct correlation
between gas prices and an incumbent president’s reelection. The downward
pressure that gas prices put on GDP growth is a far better indicator of
electoral success by incumbent parties in election years.
Obama is correct in some ways, there is no silver bullet and
drilling would not immediately solved our problems (although, I recall having
this debate 10 years ago when the opposition said drilling was not an option
because it would take a decade to get to market). But the president committed a
major error by being unable
to control the narrative surrounding his administration’s rejection of most
of the Keystone XL Pipeline. In political terms, this is an easily exploited
mistake that can be used to augment the most potent caricatures of the
president as an aloof progressive who is beholden to special interest groups at
the expense of average consumers.
This problem is compounded by Energy Sec. Steven Chu’s admission
that the administration’s goals of moving most Americans over to consuming
renewable energy is aided by high gas prices not reducing the price of oil in the
short term.
In a Congressional hearing last week, when asked by Rep. Alan
Nunnelee (R-MS) if the administration’s goal was to get the price of gasoline
down to palatable levels Chu responded, “no, the
overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our
economy.”
"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the
levels in Europe" Chu said in 2008.
In Europe, prices regularly hover around $8 - $9/gallon.
Chu’s
candid admissions combined with the Keystone controversy make for a strong
argument in Republican’s hands. Republicans could make that argument; it would provoke predictably
toxic levels of outrage among Obama’s political allies, but the message would
resonate with voters. Obama knows this.
So, why do most Republicans seem so cautious on the matter, especially
when prices are likely to only go up between now and the peak of driving season
this summer? Possibly, because gas prices are so closely linked to global crude
oil prices which America has little control over, it is entirely possible that
prices could decrease as rapidly as they have increased. If tension in the
Middle East boil over and conflict breaks out, the pressure on suppliers to
increase production and release reserves would be overwhelming and could drive
prices down.
Even without this nightmare scenario, notoriously volatile crude
prices could collapse of their own accord, handing Obama an unearned political victory.
Whatever the reason, the GOP is wasting a political opportunity.
Obama is attempting to own the gas prices issue and is aggressively and
preemptively taking on his opponents for making gas prices an issue. Obama may
not be able to overcome the fundamental problem, rising gas prices under his
watch, but he is attempting to command the narrative.
So far, Obama is winning this battle in the war of 2012.
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