Dumbing Down the Election

Ever since George Bush sold the idea he would be a compassionate conservative, respect for voters' intelligence has been going rapidly downhill. The gas-tax holiday is a new low.

Described by New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg as "about the dumbest thing I’ve heard in an awful long time from an economic point of view” and in the face of bipartisan disapproval in Congress, John McCain and Hillary Clinton are out there trolling for votes on the theory that economically hard-pressed Americans are morons.

Giving consumers 18 cents on $4-a-gallon at the gas pump may sound good, but it would add up to a saving of less than $30 for most families, encourage consumption and cost the government $9 billion and the economy 300,000 jobs.

The tax supports the federal Highway Trust Fund, which finances road projects nationwide and is already facing a $3.4 billion shortfall, according to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation. The federal transportation department says every $1 billion in highway spending creates 34,779 jobs.

But the candidates are banking on voters' inability to grasp the fact that a pre-election handout won't solve their problems but make them worse in the long run. Even the Wall Street Journal says the idea “smacks of poll-driven gimmickry.”

But Hillary Clinton is out there claiming to be "the only candidate who has a plan to give relief to the nation’s drivers" while John McCain is promising them "a little break."

How dense do they think we are?

Running Out and Cutting Down

As gasoline prices head toward $4 a gallon, there are signs Americans are starting to use less.

“Sustained higher gasoline prices are beginning to show up in lower gasoline consumption,” an analyst for the Energy Information Administration observes as usage declines for the first time in two decades, albeit by only a fraction of one percent. The drop was more dramatic last Christmas when total miles traveled in the US dropped 3.9 percent compared with a year earlier.

Not a minute too soon, according to Paul Krugman, who foresees hard times when "an ever-growing world economy pushes up against the limits of a finite planet" and rich countries "face steady pressure on their economies from rising resource prices, making it harder to raise their standard of living" and poorer countries "find themselves living dangerously close to the edge--or over it."

In this election year, politicians will talk darkly about oil industry collusion to raise prices, which may well be true, but not much about conservation. Voters don't want to hear about driving less, carpooling, using mass transit and buying fuel-efficient vehicles.

But $4 a gallon seems to be getting their attention, and $5 would have them spellbound. Starting to conserve now would help stave that off.

Earth Day would be a good time to start.