Tue, Jul 15, 2008 (2:05 a.m.)

With oil prices continuing to surge on his watch, President Bush on Monday resorted to his major skills in times of crises — symbolic gestures and empty political rhetoric.

After 9/11 Bush visited ground zero and shouted rousing words through a bullhorn. After Hurricane Katrina he traveled to the devastated areas, without a bullhorn but with equally stirring words.

History has shown, however, that his words in trying times are followed by ineptitude and inattentiveness.

Dramatic words from Bush were uttered again Monday following his lifting of the executive order that had banned offshore drilling along the eastern Gulf of Mexico and much of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

Issued by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, the order was extended by President Clinton. It protected coastal real estate and fishing and tourism economies from oil spills.

Fortunately, Congress is not about to lift its own, less expansive offshore drilling moratorium imposed in 1981, making Bush’s action on Monday merely symbolic — but politically convenient.

“Americans will rightly ask how ... high gas prices have to rise before the Democratic-controlled Congress will do something about it,” Bush intoned.

Actually, all Bush did was perpetuate a theme Republicans have adopted this campaign season — Democrats are at fault for the oil prices. Never mind that it was the Republicans who for years blocked higher mileage standards for automobiles, that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are oilmen and that Republican ties to Big Oil are legendary.

The truth, as stated in a House committee’s report last month, is that oil and gas companies, in addition to having huge land and offshore areas already under production, hold leases on 68 million acres of federal land and waters that are idle. If drilling is the answer, why aren’t they working these leases?

If we as a nation are to look oceanward, it should be to tap the energy of waves. Europe, Japan and Australia are making great progress on this forward-looking technology, while we have a president still hawking oil.