FITTING THE last-minute factor of high oil prices into the equation of the
presidential election-a race that was supposed to neatly pit class warfare
against morality and dignity-is not going to be easy.
As an issue, it simply doesn't lend itself to the usual exploitation.
Maybe this is why Rep. Dan Burton (R- Ind.), who's rarely put off by a
cheap shot, has scheduled hearings of his committee to try to milk some mileage
out of it.
Normally, the party incumbent in the White House would be the natural goat.
The recent spike in oil prices and the threat of a winter heating-oil crisis
happened on the Democrats' watch.
But if it were that simple we surely would have heard more on this subject
by now from George W. Bush.
This makes it all the more incomprehensible that the Republicans decided
this year to nominate not one but two oil men and not one but two Texans.
One of them, Dick Cheney, got rich servicing oil companies and would have
gotten even richer if he hadn't been embarrassed into shedding those options in
Halliburton Co. shares that gave him a personal financial reason to pray for
higher oil prices.
The other, George W. Bush, had much the opposite experience. He almost got
ruined by low oil prices and was able to build a small fortune only by deftly
bailing out on his investors and switching from the oil business to the sports
business.
If oil prices had risen to 2000 levels right after Bush got seriously into
the oil business in the early 1980s, the chances are he'd still be happily
pumping the stuff. What a blissful life for a man now having fits trying to
pronounce hard words, remember names of foreign leaders and maintain a facial
expression that does not suggest he's about to call someone a vulgar name that
will have to be deleted from family newspapers.
What happened was that after 1982 oil prices started declining. All the
money Bush had called in from family friends to dig holes in the surface of
Texas was yielding negative returns.
By 1986, the average world price of oil was a lousy $12.51 a barrel, down
from $28.52 in 1982. That's why in 1986, Bush described himself as "all name
and no money." And the investors who had generously financed him probably had
an even less generous description of their golden boy and his expensive holes,
maybe even a name with "hole" in it.
So voters are stuck with two Republican candidates who can't very well call
for lower oil prices with a straight face because they spent earlier careers
praying for higher ones. All they can do is suggest that Al Gore is the real
candidate of big oil because he inherited Occidental Petroleum shares from his
father and had sense enough to stuff them in a blind trust.
Bush, of course, faults the Clinton administration because it hasn't opened
up sensitive wilderness areas to extensive exploration. Of course, if the
government had done this back when Bush was in the oil business, he'd have lost
his shirt even quicker.
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