I’m going to assume that the focus groups put oil prices at the very top of voters’ priority lists. Energy policy has gone from something of an afterthought — remember when Iraq dominated the Democratic race? — to the singular focus of the Clinton campaign.
Clinton’s attacks on oil prices as artificially inflated, Enron-style, keep escalating, and [Monday] she appeared to threaten to break up the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
“We’re going to go right at OPEC,” she said. “They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price they’re going to put it at,” she told a crowd at a firehouse in Merrillville, IN.
“That’s not a market. That’s a monopoly,” she said, saying she’d use anti-trust law and the World Trade Organization to take on OPEC.
There is a bill pending in Congress that would “make oil-producing and exporting cartels illegal,” and the Obama campaign was quick to point out that Clinton has not signed on as a co-sponsor. She did, however, vote for a version of the legislation last year.
All of this, of course, dovetails nicely on the debate over the Clinton/McCain proposal for a “gas-tax holiday” over the summer. It shows Clinton identifying a major concern on the part of voters, and offering concrete ideas to address those concerns.
But like temporarily waiving the federal gas tax, there’s a disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality.
Josh Marshall’s response sounds about right.
What is Hillary talking about? She’s going to break up the OPEC oil cartel? Because we have such a strong hand to play now with the OPEC member states? And isn’t the main issue here a matter of rising demand, principally for rapidly expanding economies in Asia, not monopoly pricing?
Hillary is certainly not the first candidate to bash the oil producing states or oil companies around election time. And the polls seem to show it’s working for her. But I’m concerned about the widening gap between reality and her campaign trail statements. First with the pledge to obliterate Iran if they attack Israel, then the rebellion against economists and now this.
Where are we going here?
Well, that’s a good question. Clinton’s pitch yesterday probably sounds pretty good — she’s going to get tough with those Middle Eastern countries that export all the oil we want, and break up their monopoly. For low-information voters, this might even move a few votes in Clinton’s direction.
But it’s the follow-up where Clinton runs into trouble. First, the U.S., no matter who’s president, simply isn’t in a position to dictate that OPEC “no longer be a cartel.” I’m not exactly enthralled with OPEC, either, but we don’t have the ability to just break up this monopoly.
Second, OPEC’s structural flaws notwithstanding, the rising price of gas isn’t exactly OPEC’s fault. As Yglesias explained, “It’s just not the case that the current price escalation is driven by OPEC-induced supply restrictions — all indications are that everyone’s producing as much oil as they possibly can. After all, with prices this high how could you afford not to pump as much oil as you could? It’s just that demand for oil is high and rising, so the price goes up.”
I would assume that Clinton knows this, which is why it’s disappointing to hear her suggest “going to go right at OPEC” might help consumers at the pump. It won’t.
And third, all of this gave Obama yet another opportunity to characterize Clinton as a candidate who’ll say anything to win: “You say you’ve been in the White House for eight years, you’ve had two terms as U.S. Senator and haven’t said a word about OPEC and now suddenly you’re gonna take it right to OPEC…. That’s not being straight with the American people.”
We’ll see soon enough just how many voters are buying into the rhetoric anyway.
Post Script: I’d just add, by the way, that I find it so much more enjoyable to blog about energy policy than flag pins, haircuts, and cackles. I think Clinton’s wrong on this, but it’s not about her personality or style, it’s about substance. Wouldn’t the campaign be fun if it were always like this?