Campaign 2000: Gas Lines - Brief Article

National Review, July 17, 2000

The rise in the price of gas-it's around $2.30 a gallon in much of the Midwest-would seem to be an issue tailor-made for Republicans. Environmentalists, very much including Al Gore, have long favored higher prices for energy; the Clinton administration raised the gas tax in 1993, and tried to raise energy taxes even more; an administration regulation on fuel has been blamed for 25 cents of the price increase.

Gore, recognizing the danger, has been at his demagogic worst in responding to the price spike, which he blames on "gouging" by the oil companies. His aides have suggested that Bush, a former oilman, would protect the industry. Now, Gore is far too intelligent to believe any of this. Surely he knows that companies usually set prices so as to maximize profits; if a price changes, it is because shifting market conditions have changed the price at which this happens. And the rise in oil-company profits that the Gore campaign eyes suspiciously preceded the run-up in prices. Add the fact that Gore is also proposing $75 billion in subsidies for alternative fuels, and it looks as though Gore is running to succeed not Bill Clinton but Jimmy Carter.

Yet Republicans have had difficulty taking advantage of the issue. Some in Congress have suggested repealing Clinton's tax increase on gas. This is a worthy idea, but one that would lower gas prices by only 4.3 cents. George W. Bush has tried to wrap all the possible criticisms of the administration into the complaint that it lacks a "national energy policy"-a critique that does not sound very conservative and lacks political bite.

The larger problem is that the Republicans' argument for lower gas prices has lacked a principled basis. In a free market, individual prices will sometimes go up; annoyance at this fact of life is not a reasonable basis for public policy. The government's goal should not be that prices go down, but that they be set freely. And that means, above all, that the OPEC cartel must be broken. America fought a war ten years ago to prevent one tyrannical regime from controlling 40 percent of the world's oil supply. It is time to reassert the principle of free trade in vital commodities. This administration, perversely, has been more set on breaking up Microsoft than on breaking up OPEC.

As for Gore, his vulnerability is what he would do to gas prices in the future. Republicans can legitimately suggest that today's prices are just a foretaste of what they could expect from a man ideologically hostile to cars and roads. The Kyoto global-warming accord he favors would require massive tax increases on energy. Gore's campaign against sprawl is also a campaign against cars, and for congestion. Liberals believe, as not a few of them have written in recent weeks, that the American people are decadent in their love of cars and "spoiled" by low gas prices. Gore, whose policies reflect the same assumptions, should be forced to defend them.