If he persists in refusing to embrace the obvious solutions, voters could be forgiven for wondering whether he might just be a part of the problem.
If he persists in refusing to embrace the obvious solutions, voters could be forgiven for wondering whether he might just be a part of the problem.
P resident Joe Biden has a message for the American people about the precipitous increase in gas prices through which we have now been suffering for nearly a year: “They’re going to go up.” Peremptorily addressing reporters in Fort Worth, Texas, yesterday, Biden tried out a new explanation for this trend. “Can’t do much right now,” he said. “Russia is responsible.”
This, evidently, is the White House’s new line. Adumbrating the approach in today’s Washington Post, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake cast the invasion of Ukraine as a welcome break for the administration. “The good news,” she wrote, “is we now have a very specific reason for rising gas prices and a specific villain. Before, it was kind of ambiguous: What’s going on? Why are gas prices going up?”
Say what you will about Vladimir Putin, but at least he’s a specific villain!
Lake’s account is, of course, absolute nonsense. It is true that for the last two weeks Russia has shared the blame. But President Biden’s energy policy has been incoherent from the moment he took office, and it shows. Stuck between an oil-phobic progressive movement and a supermajority of American car-lovers, Biden has vacillated without relief. Insofar as he has one, his position seems now to be (1) that the United States should not take dramatic steps to increase our domestic energy production because that will only help in the long term, not the short term; (2) that the United States should not take those long-term steps — steps that would be helping now, had they been taken earlier — because to take them would be bad for the climate; (3) that, having not taken those steps, in the short term all we can do is raid the strategic petroleum reserve, because, being upstanding sorts, we don’t buy oil from immoral countries (except for Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, whose oil we’ll happily purchase).
Translation: Like me, please! Anyone?
The new pro-Biden talking point is that those dastardly Republicans are trying to have it both ways. Per its critics, the GOP is being horribly opportunistic by on the one hand supporting the U.S.’s decision to stop buying Russian oil and on the other hand believing that the president’s broader approach is a recipe for disaster. But there is nothing wrong with this view — indeed, it’s the correct view. It is true that refusing to purchase Russian oil is the right short-term policy. It is also true that a better long-term policy would have lessened the upward pressure on domestic prices that short-term events such as the war in Ukraine can exert. For a neat illustration of how these two ideas can intersect, one need only to look at Germany.
Really, there is only one person in this situation who is trying to have it both ways, and it is President Joe Biden, who sometimes wants Americans to believe that high gas prices have nothing whatsoever to do with government policy — and everything to do with oil companies being greedy, selfish nations refusing to pump enough for Americans to use, or Vladimir Putin’s aggression — and at other times wants Americans to believe that he is the all-powerful Green Joe, the Savior of the Climate, the canceler of the Keystone pipeline, the defender of public lands, the suspender of onshore-lease sales, the all-round weaner-offer, whose administration is determined to “see what can be unburdened by what has been and then to make the possible actually happen.”
President Biden does not set gas prices (though, by directly implying otherwise, the Democratic Party has done him no favors). But it is not true that he has no effect on them whatsoever, and the effect that Biden wants to have on them would be deleterious. At a bizarre event two days ago — an event held to celebrate the March 2021 spending binge that has made inflation so much worse — Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg ignored contemporary energy prices completely, and instead waxed lyrical about America’s glorious “zero emissions” future. This is not the way. At some point, the technology with which the White House is so obsessed is likely to exist. But for now, it doesn’t, so our policy should be to max out production in every way possible, without letting up at any point or for any reason — to drill, frack, and refine as much oil as we can within our borders; to import as much oil as we can from friendly nations such as Canada; and to finally start the process of building the network of nuclear-power plants that will permit us to satisfy our voracious appetite for energy without burning fossil fuels forever. President Biden opposes all of this in favor of a green fantasy. If he persists in refusing to embrace the obvious solutions, voters could be forgiven for wondering whether he might just be a part of the problem.