Even the audience President Barack Obama hoped to manipulate with his Feb. 23 energy speech can recognize self-contradiction.
Obama must have assumed that most people hearing his speech at the University of Miami will accept his premises and believe whatever he says about energy. There, he’s on solid ground.
Many Americans, for example, don’t yet appreciate the huge supply of oil and gas presenting itself from development of unconventional reservoirs.
So they might accept as standard wisdom Obama’s subpresidential and increasingly questionable jeer that, “Anybody who tells you that we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about or just isn’t telling you the truth.”
And Americans unfamiliar with the boring vagaries of extractive-industry taxation might believe Obama when he complains, “Right now, $4 billion of your tax dollars subsidize the oil industry every year—$4 billion.”
But now who’s dallying with truth?
These are understandably difficult points of argument for observers unfamiliar with the oil and gas industry. But anyone can recognize structural flaws of logic.
Obama scolded Republicans for blaming him for high gasoline prices. While fanatical regulation deserves some blame, crude prices elevated by tension over Iran explain most of the gasoline distress. Obama can’t control that.
But Republicans aren’t saying much about regulation. They’re pointing out that gasoline prices are painfully high now and were not when Obama took office, implying he must be the reason.
That’s unfair. Coincidence doesn’t mean cause. Obama wants people to remember that.
Except when the fallacy helps him. “Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last 8 years,” he boasted in Florida. Later: “We’re focused on production. That’s not the issue.”
What a howler! The Obama administration discourages oil and gas as a matter of policy. It’s in its budget narrative.
Of course, not everyone reads budget narratives. But anyone knows that no one, not even the president, can claim both sides of an argument.
(Online Feb. 24, 2012; author’s e-mail: [email protected])