Apparently Job #1 for Obama Is Pumping Gas

President Obama’s approval ratings have taken a dive and two new polls say rising gas and fuel prices are a significant reason. Apparently American voters, in their perpetually arrested development, think the American president controls world oil markets. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 65% either “somewhat” or “strongly” disapprove of the President’s failure to hold gas prices down. A New York Times/CBS News poll found that, of those that answered the question, 60% thought the President “can do a lot about” the price of gas.

Seeing an opening and unconcerned for truth, Republican candidates are willfully lying. Newt Gingrich says Obama wants gasoline prices to reach the European level of $9 or $10 a gallon but that "he just wants it to be gradual". What the President in fact said during the 2008 campaign was that he “would have preferred a gradual" increase to that summer's $4 a gallon because “the fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing.”

Obama in 2008 said energy prices would "skyrocket" under his energy plan according to Mitt Romney, who hopes that voters would confuse this with gasoline, but Obama in 2008 was talking about electricity prices under cap and trade, and cap and trade is nowhere in sight under this Administration.

They could make a better case aiming their invective at the Senate. In the beginning of December, the Senate voted 100-to-0 — you read that right — to require the President, starting July 1, to penalize any entity — corporations, central banks, etc. — that does business with the Central Bank of Iran, which they must to purchase Iranian oil. And in a still more severe move, the Senate Banking Committee has voted to expel Iranian banks from the Belgium-based SWIFT telecommunications system that handles all interbank transfers worldwide, the effect being to bring all Iranian financial activity to a standstill. So the President will be hamstrung by one or more laws passed with little aforethought that leave a mess for others to clean up

If we paralyze Iran’s economy, they will assuredly make good on their threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which passage moves 20% of the world’s oil supply every day. Inaction would show weakness, and elections are coming in Iran as well. We have already written here, beginning at “Strait Talk”, how much more dangerous it will be to clear the Strait than the Navy’s bluster would have you believe. If Iran does no more than mine the Strait, every tanker will instantly drop anchor.

Speculators have, of course, picked up on the threat and know the shortages and sky-high price for oil that would result, and it’s their worldwide bidding for oil that drives the price of gasoline. There’s also talk of hoarding by oil companies and refiners, who would rather wait for zooming prices before they sell their products. That’s otherwise known as the free market.

But if you want to assign blame, the Senate’s move to strangle Iran is more the cause of rising gas prices. Instead, Americans blame the President.