Roll out the barrel

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Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like lowering oil prices should be an urgent priority for the US government. Here's a few ways in which high oil prices hurt US interests:

• Slowing the American economy.
• Increasing indirectly the ballooning federal debt.
• Worsening the American balance of trade.
• Giving hostile regimes in Iran and Venezuela a great deal more capability and confidence.
• Reducing the leverage over governments with whom we have difficult relations, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia.
• Increasing the damage that economic sabotage and natural disasters can do to the United States.
• Keeping US national security disproportionately focused on the Middle East and Central Asia.
• Retarding the political and economic development of countries where oil is a dominant export commodity. (Frequently, a country's dependence on a single commodity distorts that society in ugly ways, creating political turmoil that can be damaging to US interests.)

I'm sure I've omitted a few other significant consequences of high oil prices. Who knows, American diplomats may be working behind the scenes to deal with this problem. However, I think a visible effort is actually what's needed. Not only would it tell the world commodities market—always willing to jack up oil prices when the future looks uncertain—the direction in which US security policy is headed, but it would also give Americans something to rally around. Other than oil companies, high oil prices hurt Americans and American interests.

Yes, I'm deliberately being a little naïve here. I do have some idea why the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress are unwilling to make oil prices a cause celebre (instead of, say, flag burning and gay marriage). But what was that quote about the soft tyranny of low expectations…?

And where are the Democrats on this issue? If you go to the Democratic Party's national web site, the page covering the Party's economic strategy mentions high oil prices almost in passing. Rather than making oil prices the nail that seal's the Republicans' electoral coffin in the 2006 midterm elections, the point is lost among random comments about Alabama families, Senator George Allen, Hispanic families, tax cuts, and Indiana families. Huh? Oil prices should be at the top of the page, in flashing neon. The Democrats seem unable to hit even the slow, underhand pitches, which makes me wonder if the presumed Democratic landslide in November is really going to happen.

Comments

[anon]

It's very difficult to get policy makers to do things in the national interest when their personal interests point in the opposite direction. This is especially true when the policy makers in question are pretty close to sociopathic.

Cheney and company make a lot of money off high oil prices.

[Joseph]

113 mil since 2000, thats the oil and energy industry contrabutions according to The Center for Responsice Politics. Thats split about 80% Repub. and 20% Dem.

[Delicious Pundit]

There's also this problem: How? (You should check out the Oil Drum for a sense of the intractability of this problem.)

If anything oil prices should be higher in order to incentivize us to develop alternative sources. That this might help in climate change -- a force that I believe will be far more destablizing on this continent -- is lagniappe.

[sglover]

Echoing delicious pundit. It's difficult to see how oil prices can do anythng but rise, for the rest of our lives. A better national strategy would be to try to moderate the commodity's price volatility, to protect consumers from psikes, and to reassure investors in alternative energy that they won't have the rug pulled out from under them by transient plunges in the cost of a barrel of oil.

[Honza Prchal]

Your broader point is excellent, but on tactics, that's the sort of argument that has to be made late in an election given the parties voting records on allowing driulling in the USA. Last I checked, no other nation in the world restricted it's own ability to drill and explore.

I'm sure Russia joins the other bad actors on your list as being thrilled at our priorities.

[Thomas Palm]

Joseph, the rational suggestion for how to reduce US consumption of oil is to tax it. This is especially attractive for a huge consumer like USA because the resulting drop in demand will lower global oil prices ensuring that it will be the oil producers rather than the consumers who will pay much of the cost. The problem with implementing a rational policy is that it requires rational voters...

[Jim Harrison]

The arguments about offshore and Alaskan drilling create the false impression that there are sufficient oil reserves to make a lasting difference to oil prices. There aren't. Anyhow, environmental concerns aside, it makes sense to save the reserves for as long as possible since they will increase in value as oil becomes scarcer and scarcer. Drilling now just ensures that the oil will get burnt in one of Arnold's hummers.