$2 for “gas” sounds like fast-food price

Michele Bachmann making promises that we will pay less than $2 for a gallon of gasoline makes her sound like a candidate for a school student council president – rather than one aspiring to be president of the United States.

BACHMANN: Running for Jr. High prez?



You know what I mean.

YOU’RE SITTING IN the bleachers of the school gym all those years ago, listening to some council wannabe say during a special assembly that if we vote for her, she’ll use her office to ensure that we get better quality food in the school cafeteria.

It was nonsense talk some three decades ago when I heard it, and we all knew it then. So why does Bachmann think we’re now supposed to believe it when she makes an equally-absurd political promise?

Which she did earlier this week during a campaign appearance in South Carolina. Apparently, winning that straw poll in Iowa really went to her head, in that she’s now speaking with authority on issues upon which she has little to no influence.

What she’s going to realize is that the people who voted for her in that straw poll had probably just sniffed a little too much livestock excrement and were a little giddy when they dropped their bean into a jar.

THE BULK OF us are a little more rational. We’re going to see this as the cheap political talk that it truly is.

What this really amounts to is a petty attempt by the candidate to take a pot shot at Barack Obama on an issue that hits us right in the gut – as well as in the wallet.

We’re sick of having to pay so much for gasoline – remembering well the days when a gallon of gas was about $1 in some places, and we thought it ridiculously expensive that gasoline stations near downtown were charging rates as exorbitant as $1.40!!!

Now, that’s a price that’s pure fantasy. Even Bachmann won't promise it.

BACHMANN WANTS US to think “It’s Obama’s fault!” every time we have to fill up our automobile’s gasoline tank (which in my case takes place about once a week – some have to do it more often).

So she says she can bring the price down significantly from its current area level of just under $4 per gallon (the last time I filled up, I paid $3.839).

Not that she really can do that. If anything, gasoline prices are determined by factors related to the crude oil market. There is little any federal government official could do to pressure the price to drop significantly.

Bachmann, whose campaign rhetoric says she’d push for increased oil drilling in the United States and reduced regulations on the shale gas industry, wouldn’t have the impact she thinks she would have.

WHICH TO ME sounds more like she’s interested in benefitting business interests that want to think they’d be completely profitable IF ONLY they didn’t have to comply with regulations that largely are in place to protect the public safety and the environment.

If Bachmann is going to go around promising $2 for a gallon of gas, perhaps she ought to also go around blaming the “tree-huggers” for causing the problem. Those pesky environmentalists!

Such a statement would make about as much sense as any promise made toward the price of gas.

Of course, when she would fail in her effort, I have no doubt she’ll also blame “foreigners,” particularly OPEC and Arabs in general. She’ll create the stereotype that they are the ones who are benefitting from the high gas prices we’re now paying.

WHICH I’M SURE many of the ideologues who take her presidential aspirations (Or should I say fantasies?) seriously would be more than willing to believe. It’s somebody else’s fault!

If there is anything that we, the people of this nation, could do to have an impact on gasoline prices, it probably would be to reduce the amount of driving we insist upon doing.

Using less gasoline would impact the industry to the point where they’d have to drop prices ever so slightly to encourage us to by more. After all, the time for someone to “jack up” the price of a good is when demand for it is at its peak.

But I’m sure there are some ideologues who are reading this and gnashing their teeth right about now. Telling them that they should use their automobiles more responsibly is going to be interpreted by many of these Bachmann supporters as somehow interfering with their personal liberty.

I MAY EVEN very well get some response about less driving that is reminiscent of the late actor Charlton Heston’s “from my cold, dead hands” quip to the National Rifle Association about firearms. Bachmann herself would probably offer up such a response, if she thought she could score a few political points off of it.

So where should we go from here? Bachmann has the right to make cheap statements as part of her campaigning. We just have to be sure to be responsible enough to acknowledge them for the ridiculous rhetoric that they are.

Unless you are the type who really believed that your junior high vote was going to be a factor in getting a better-quality slice of pizza for lunch.

Then again, perhaps lunch at discount-oriented fast-food places is the appropriate place to think of now. For $2 worth of items at, say, a White Castle is about the only place you’ll get gas for that price.

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