Nothing Can be Done.
I was having trouble breezing my eyes through the Democratic debate to find the totality of Mike Gravel’s comments regarding Oil. I first stumbled upon this analysis from a professional pundit:
My vote for the least politically savvy statement from last night’s debate goes to former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who offered a tough-love approach for America’s pain at the pump: “There’s nothing I would do as president to lower the price of gasoline right now. We Americans have to grow up.”
Pandering is clearly not Gravel’s strong suit.
“Political Saavy” my asphalt. We have found the reason that the debates, 17 months out from the actual Election, need the Mike Gravels of the world. To keep at least one meaningful statement into the equation, meaningless equating to political saavy.
The rest of Mike Gravel’s statement to that question of what he would do about high gas prices — the answer is “nothing” — and more importantly, the hidden price of gasoline:
If we want to get off of the dependency in the Middle East, we have to own up to the problem. These things cost money. They’re controlling our society.
And the sooner we stop fighting these wars — here, stop and think. You only see $3. Just watch those wheels turn. There’s another $4, which is what we spend to keep American troops around the world to keep the price.
So you’re paying more than seven dollars a gallon; you just don’t know it.
I am reminded of an answer Eugene McCarthy gave to a question during his 1968 bid for the White House. As written by Tom Wicker in a preface to a Eugene McCarthy book released in 1975, this passage comes to the old refrain about a gaffe being the telling of unwanted truths:
On the eve of the Democratic convention, when McCarthy still might have had a chance to be nominated, the Warsaw Pact powers invaded Czechoslovakia and put an end to the “Prague Spring”. It chanced that McCarthy had a Washington news conference scheduled for the next day, and when it commenced, the reporters demanded to know what, as president, he would have done about events in Eastern Europe.
Nothing, McCarthy replied, in a few unexcited words to that effect.
Astounded, the reporters demanded to know why he would have done nothing, against every tradition of the Imperial Presidency.
Because, McCarthy replied candidly, there’s nothing I could have done. He went on to suggest that the lights that had burned late in the White House the night before, the agitated comings and goings of LBJ and his cohorts were mostly window dressing. Johnson was not going to do anything either, could do nothing, but was making a great show of doing something anyway — managing the crisis, firing off cables, phoning up bureaucrats, solemnly briefing Senators. When all that was finished, McCarthy observed, the Prague Spring still would be over and the Warsaw Pact in charge of Czechoslovakia — as they were, a subsequent fact which failed to dispel the outrage and disdain of reporters used to imperial bluster from every president back to Harry S Truman.