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Kerry's gas gag

Rich Lowry:

Did the Bush tax cuts cause the Chinese economy to grow? John Kerry must think they did if he really believes, as he says every day on the campaign trail, that rising gas prices are President Bush's fault. Who knew the trans-oceanic power of "tax cuts for the rich"?

Surging world demand in a recovering global economy is what has driven up gas prices, which respond to the mundane forces of supply and demand. The Massachusetts senator knows this, but pretends instead that the international oil market is controlled by Bush the way the full-service attendant controls the pump at your local gas station. Nothing is so unedifying as watching someone feign economic ignorance for the benefit of voters genuinely ignorant of basic economics. But this is the Kerry play on gas.

Kerry complains that Bush hasn't done enough to "jawbone" the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Saudi Arabia into lowering prices. But jawboning is futile. We can ask the Saudis over and over to lower prices, we can even say "pretty please," and it will accomplish nothing. The Saudis will do what they have always done -- manipulate the market to try to maximize their own profits. Oil expert Jerry Taylor, of the Cato Institute, compares the idea of jawboning to asking the clerk at your grocery store to lower the price of produce: You can ask, but it's not going to get you anywhere.

The Kerry jawboning critique isn't even consistent. When Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," was released, Kerry jumped on a paragraph in which Saudi diplomat Prince Bandar loosely talked of lowering prices to keep the U.S. economy roaring during an election year. Kerry immediately criticized what he said was "a secret deal" between Bush and the Saudis. Never mind that Woodward reported no such secret deal. But what if there were a secret deal? Wouldn't this be exactly the sort of jawboning Kerry calls for now?

There some forces at work that have kept the prices from going higher. Iraq is producing in excess of its prewar levels already and efforts are underway to increase production. This has two benefits. It increases supply and helps Iraq pay more of its own reconstruction costs. Sactions have also been lifted against Libya, putting her oil in the US supply chain again. Libya's production will probably also increase soon since it now has access to US technology that can help it find and produce more oil (can you Haliburton?).