Letters to the Editor
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The only way to lower gas prices
Worldwide energy demand is outstripping supply, so prices have to rise to attain some kind of equilibrium. Even your basic free market capitalist can figure this one out. So it only follows that any administration that is serious about lowering (or even stabilizing) fuel prices is going to have to, wait for it, cut demand by some mechanism other than raising the price.
I'd say that it is entirely possible for this to happen, if our political leadership would to get serious about energy conservation and alternative power sources. Personally, I'd much rather $500 BILLION dollars went to energy R&D rather than engaging in mutually destructive wars. The problem isn't that we don't have the ability, the problem is that, as a culture, we make bad decisions.
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I think the problem with the assertion that this will hit McCain is that it depends upon
a belief among the electorate that the Democratic candidate will be any more effective at solving it. Somehow I'm not sure that Obama's vague assurances of change are going to do it.
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"Bush tried."
Do you really believe that George Bush actually asked the Saudis to lower oil prices? That was just a little show for Republican rubes!
The oil companies make *more* money when the price of crude rises. It's not as if they're some sort of middleman, much as they would like us to think of them that way.
There's no reason whatsoever for President Oil-Man to want crude prices to drop.
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OK, Lemme Get This Straight
The rule is when gas prices go up inordinately the incumbent party loses in the next general election. Except when it doesn't. And we are to make of this...exactly what?
The only way gas prices will ever be significantly pushed down will be if either a) we quit driving so damn much (no sign of that yet) or b) the Executive and Legislative branches agree on something and decide to wrench down hard on everyone involved in the petrol production chain while simultaneously doing something significant to reduce gasoline consumption (no sign yet that such a confluence of events is even on the radar). It has very little to do with who wins in November (and I am pulling for Obama, but I do not buy into the "Magic Negro", I simply believe he's our best bet overall to get us back on the good foot, probably excepting the price of gasoline, a trick for which no candidate has a magic wand).
The real horror is the "peak oil" theory is bunk. We won't run out, and we won't quit using, and we won't stop complaining. Welcome to hell.
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The issue is sample size
When you go back as far as 1979, that represents a total of 7 elections. No statistician would be willing to identify a trend with such a small sample size in an environment with as many variables as a presidential election.
That said, don't be so sure that the Republican Party is absolutely helpless when it comes to reducing gas prices. They can't do much about oil, but a lot of the ultimate cost of gasoline is due to processing costs and profit margins which are largely controlled by a cartel. This cartel is quite sympathetic to right-wing politicians and might find it to their advantage to make sure that no processing plants are down in the months prior to the election and perhaps even to cut their profit margin slightly in order to ensure that people's perception is that fuel prices are dropping. This would cost them very little compared to the cost of a windfall profit tax that might come about under unified Democratic control of Congress and the White House.
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Slow week Leonard?
So the incumbants always lose when gas prices go up. Except for when they don't...which according to your article has happened twice--once in 1996 ("The exception that proves the rule?") and again in 2004 ("The only significant exception to this pattern...") .
It was very prudent of you to wrap up the article listing other factors that may have influenced the elections too. Like the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, or Perot's candidacy in '92...those factors which everyone else has long since concluded were the DECIDING factors. All in all what you given us here is 3 paragraphs proposing an interesting new perspective, and two final paragraphs tearing that perspective apart.
Take some time off Andrew. Enjoy some of that Berkeley, California weather. Try again next week.
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We Should Stop Complaining
We're dumping ice cubes into the water and complaining that the water is too cold.
Looking at the vehicles that people drive, I have no sympathy for the folks that purchase gas guzzlers. They drive the cost of gas up for everyone.
Don't blame OPEC for not raising production because they see us as greedy consumers.
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Have you heard thing one from any candidate about the 'economy'? I haven't
I can't even imagine either party suggesting anything resembling hard choices that would be required to address problems with gas prices or problems in the economy. No one is every going to broadcast hardship in an election. Everyone want to hear magical golden unicorns falling from the sky.
The GOP doesn't acknowledge there is a problem and neither of the Dem candidates are suggesting anything other than carefully cloaked handouts.
And for the record, a LOT of you are secretly cheering that gas will be $4, $5, $8/gal in the hope that it will both validate your Ecozeal and punish the people who embrace the modern world.
Just don't forget that a substantial component of EVERY OTHER COST is fuel, including FOOD costs. So when gas is $7/gal, milk will be $7/gal too. And while the Whole Food Cyber Hippies can afford that, most of us can't.
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So who drives SUV's?
I drive an older Camry station wagon. Everybody I know drives midsize sedans with a few teeny cars like the PT Cruiser or the Cooper Mini.
Most of the SUV's I see driven around are owned by well-off middle-class families with two breadwinners, usually driving alone (without their kids) and acting like they own the road. The only thing worse are the monster pickup trucks, driven by rednecks who imagine they're in a TV commercial. And 95 percent of the pickups have nothing being hauled in their rear cargo container; they've gotten big cargo-haulers that are hauling empty.
Why drive such big cars? Possibly the low-cost financing these people got when buying these cars. But that's about to end, along with affordable housing. I can't help but wonder if the dying economy will cause these monsters to be repo'ed, and once they are, the amazing discovery by the finance agency that no sane person wants to buy such gas hogs.
So why did Detroit make such cars and make them the main product sold in their ads?
There is so much human stupidity revolving around the manufacture, purchase and ownership of automobiles in America that it's impossible to figure who deserves to be thrown up against the wall and shot first.