Legal Commentary

Under the most favorable characterization, Obama displays the stupidity of youth in urging the tapping of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

By Beldar

Depending on the circumstances, sometimes only a few years' difference in life experience can translate into an enormous gap in wisdom.

I was born in November 1957, at the tail-end of the Baby Boom. Teens from small towns in the west Texas prairies learned to drive early in those days. I'd actually been driving when I ought not, with my parents' knowledge and consent but without lawful authority, for quite some time. But I got my full-fledged drivers license ? to replace the provisional "hardship" license I'd previously held, which allowed me to drive to and from work in daylight hours ? in November 1973, when I turned 16 during my junior year in high school. By then, I had family spread across the State of Texas, and whether to visit them or for extra-curricular events and college interviews, I had frequent need to take cross-state driving trips in which I'd be the one paying to fill my own gas tank.

But as it happened, 1973 was a momentous year in world history far beyond the prairies of west Texas. The Israeli armed forces had bounced back from their initial losses to a combined sneak attack of Arab countries on Yom Kippur, October 6, 1973, and by October 24th ? with the essential support of the United States ? they had inflicted even more humiliating losses on Egypt and Syria that are still reflected in the maps of today's Middle East. In sympathy with their Arab brethren, and in retaliation against the United States, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and other Arab states began a total oil embargo against America on October 19, 1973.

President Nixon did the right thing in backing up Israel. But ordinary Americans, from the top to bottom of society and across our entire nation, paid a price ? and not just in dollars! Gasoline didn't just become more expensive, it became unavailable. There was nationwide, mandatory gasoline rationing in late 1973 and early 1974: Drivers could only buy gasoline, if they could find it at all, after waiting in long lines on either odd- or even-numbered days of the month (depending on the last digit of their license plates). Driving from, say, Lamesa to Austin suddenly became an exercise in strategic planning, scrounging, and guesswork about which towns en route might have open stations, especially if (as I was obliged to do) you were traveling on a weekend. Gas stations open on Sundays became rarer than hens' teeth.

The dislocation of the American lifestyle and economy was vastly greater than anything America had experienced since World War 2, and vastly greater than anything America has experienced since then ? including the first Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the current sharp rise in world-wide oil and refined gasoline prices.

Legislation passed in 1975 to create America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve was the direct result of this crisis. It's not much, but it's better than nothing, and it gives us a little flexibility, for a little while, if the fit hits the shan again and we can't count on any OPEC country delivering another barrel of oil to us at any price.

Barack Obama, however, was born on August 4, 1961. During the 1973-1974 oil embargo, Obama was 12 years old, living with his grandparents in Honululu. I feel pretty safe in assuming that he wasn't planning any cross-state or cross-country automobile trips, or trying to fill up his grandparents' gasoline tank, during that crisis.

That complete blank spot in his personal experience ? plus the politician's normal desire to pander, and the Democratic Party's utter failure to come up with anything remotely resembling a responsible energy policy ? together make up the only conceivable explanation for his monumentally, colossally, inexcusably STUPID proposal that we tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve today.

It's one thing to stop making further purchases, and to stop the continued filling of the reserve, during times when crude oil prices are high and crude oil supply is tight. That's always been part of the plan for the Reserve, and it simply makes market sense. The whole point of the reserve is to buy gradually, especially when oil is comparatively cheap and plentiful, and then to hold it for a crisis.

But it's simply inconceivable to me how anyone who had a drivers license in 1973-1974 and lived through that genuine crisis could think our present situation ? in which gasoline is expensive, but universally available ? is even remotely the kind of circumstances for which the Strategic Petroleum Reserve ought to be tapped. We're many, many times more vulnerable to an embargo now than we were in the mid-1970s; our need for a strategic reserve is therefore many times greater. And our current high gasoline prices ? while awful if you're on the margin in a business particularly dependent on gasoline prices, and while unpleasant and unhealthy for the economy as a whole ? cannot realistically be described as a national strategic crisis by anyone who understands either the word "strategic" or "crisis." Finally, the resulting drop in gas prices would be even more fleeting and insubstantial than that which would result from McCain's proposed gasoline "tax holiday" (which, as Obama has consistently argued and a genuine, near-universal consensus of energy economists have agreed, is also a campaign gimmick and a very stupid idea).

Do not be misled by double-talk of Obama aides:

His proposal comes a month after Obama said he would consider using oil from the reserves only in a "genuine emergency," such as "terrorist acts." Aides said the plan is not a reversal because he would replace light crude oil in the reserves with less-expensive heavy crude. They also noted that the senator from Illinois last week described the country's economic conditions as an "emergency."

Use your common sense: Why do you think heavy crude is less expensive? It's filled with more sulfur and other contaminants that, in turn, require more expensive refining processes that are less widely available. Anyone who tells you that a barrel of heavy crude and a barrel of light, sweet crude are fungible is a damned liar, and they're taking you for a fool to boot. This is like saying, "I'm not depleting the funds in my emergency cash stash by removing the $20 bills; why, for every $20 bill I'm taking out, I'm putting a $10 bill back in, so there's no depletion at all!"

Those who are too young to have experienced the 1973-1974 crisis, who can't remember it at all or can't remember it as vividly as I do, and who haven't learned about it in their study of American and world history, I can forgive if they're not running for president. But for someone purportedly as smart as Barack Obama, with prestigious degrees from Ivy League universities, who's making grand plans to utterly transform the American energy economy, there is no forgiveness available. Anyone in those circumstances who's making this argument is either an utter fool or a craven traitor to America's long-term interests, or both.

Either way, Obama is proposing to sell out America's long-term strategic energy interests in order to get elected. It's exactly that simple.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on August 05, 2008 (boomark / email).