Better Answers

One of the memes emerging in the Presidential campaign is high gas prices.  The Democrats now say you can't blame the President, which is more or less true, and has always been more or less true, although it has only been true for many Democrats since January 20, 2009.

Mitt Romney, who will probably be the Republican nominee notwithstanding his furious efforts to dumb-talk his way out of it, responds to this issue by saying:  well, this President ran for office saying we needed higher gas prices.

It may (or may not) be a clever answer politically, but it really is a great example of the shallowness of American politics. Romney is smart.  He knows perfectly well that higher petroleum prices would be a good idea, to the extent that the commodity is artificially underpriced.  There is an argument that it is;  it's hard to say that the externalities of resource depletion and foreign policy cost have been captured.  And there is an argument that it is not;  OPEC has been gleefully engaging in production controls and  monopoly pricing for years.  And there is an argument that years of subsidizing gas-vehicle-favored infrastructure in America mean that we should impose a tax, in order to permit other energy sources to catch up.  Or even - heavens, from this libertarian? - to promote conservation.

These are serious answers, right or wrong, to serious questions and a debate over them might conceivably lead to better policy. But they won't ever come up, because the pols think people are too stupid to follow the argument.  Or, in the case of a tax on gas, they think the idea is political suicide.  They might be right;  the few who have gone down this road got creamed.  But if the many had the guts to enter the debate honestly, who knows, some intelligent policy might ensue.

Forgive my sniffy tone.   It's just that the good questions and the good answers have been around for years.  I worked in this field in the early 1970's and they were around then.  They were ignored by politicians who knew much better, and the trail from there to the Gulf War to to 9/11/01 is pretty direct.

We members of the Grown-Up Party can sit around waiting for thoughtful conversations about significant issues, but they probably will only be among us, and never reach a larger stage.  There is too much noise.  Only a real shouter could get above it, and in the Grown-Up Party we don't have good shouters.