Editorial: Bush’s words on gas fall flat

Thursday, April 27, 2006 | 7:13 a.m.

Drastically rising gasoline prices are just what Republicans do not need as campaigns for midterm congressional elections begin heating up. With both chambers of Congress and the White House in Republican hands, voters could take out their frustrations on GOP candidates.

President Bush tried to head off this feared blow to his party on Wednesday by adopting the guise of one who sympathizes with average wage earners. This is a relatively new role for Bush, who sided almost exclusively with big business earlier in his presidency when his approval rating was much higher than his current 32 percent.

Bush sounded the part when he cast suspicions toward oil companies, as many ordinary Americans do. He ordered the Justice Department to team with the Federal Trade Commission on its investigation of possible price fixing on the part of oil companies. This may have sounded forceful, but left unsaid was that the FTC began its investigation on the initiative of a Democratic senator, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. Dorgan wrote a provision requiring the investigation into the energy bill signed by Bush last summer. That Bush is just now ordering the Justice Department to assist - particularly when the FTC report is scheduled for release next month - speaks volumes.

Bush also again used the opportunity to promote ethanol as an alternative fuel and to call for extending the tax breaks for buyers of hybrid cars. We have no quarrel with Bush on these issues, even if he has come around to promoting them at a very late date. Hybrid cars and ethanol are excellent interim solutions until hydrogen or some other ultra-clean and renewable fuel is widely available.

But no matter how hard he tried, Bush revealed his true self in calling again for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, which Congress has blocked for two decades because most Americans oppose spoiling this treasured wilderness for a small amount of oil whose impact on gas prices would be negligible. Bush also said he supported a temporary suspension of environmental standards on gas production, meaning that he would be willing to dirty our air in order to increase gasoline supply to bring prices down a few cents.

The president also called upon oil companies to invest in more refineries, so that gasoline could hit the market more quickly. This also sounded good, but oil companies have made it clear that they are not going to build refineries, which cost about $5 billion apiece, at a time when the future of oil is uncertain.

All in all, Bush batted about .150 in his public pronouncements. In truth, his words will have little to no effect on short-term gas prices. With hurricane season approaching, global demand rising, war and tensions flaring in the Middle East and world oil already at nearly peak production, it will take a lot more than belated words from a Texas oil man turned president to bring prices down.