Gasoline Prices and GW

This post contains clips from two articles on gasoline prices.

First up, this AP News story:

Retail gasoline prices pulled back slightly from record levels Tuesday and gave some consumers a small break, but a new government forecast said gas could reach as high as $4 a gallon during the summer driving season.

Second is this from CBS back in 2004:

Mr. Bush was critical of Al Gore in the 2000 campaign for being part of “the administration that’s been in charge” while the “price of gasoline has gone steadily upward.” In December 1999, in the first Republican primary debate, Mr. Bush said President Clinton “must jawbone OPEC members to lower prices.”

I am sympathetic to the argument that there is a limit to how much a president can do about gasoline prices. But this is a man who criticized the previous administration for not preventing gasoline prices from rising, so there’s nothing wrong with pointing out that they have continued to rise on his watch, and if he thought Clinton could do something about it in 1999 and 2000, why hasn’t he done anything about it since?

And there are a few things he can do. For instance, if you can’t do anything about supply, the president’s bully pulpit can be used to push down demand by encouraging conservation or pushing for higher fuel standards.

But all of this points to another issue we come back to a lot around here – what has GW done? What has he been successful at, even by his own standards?

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