When our President first campaigned, his vehicle of choice was a 17 mpg GMC Yukon.   Since his election, the price of gas has doubled and he’s now flying about in a Boeing 747 burning one gallon per second.    

According to U.S. News, during last year’s Earth Day celebration, Obama’s three-day campaign-style trip on Air Force One consumed 53,000 gallons of fuel.  A figure not including his limo, motorcade, and security.  It’s a safe bet those military jets circling Asheville throughout another recent vacation weren’t hybrids.  So much for walking your energy talk.

That said, out nation’s Commander-in-Chief is not responsible for the cost of gas.  If Obama had the ability to control fuel prices, you can bet we’d be paying about the same thing for a gallon of liquid sun we’re paying for a grande cup of java and he and Michelle would be planning four more years of tax-funded vacations.

Gas prices arise from three factors – geo-politics, geo-economics, and geo-dependency. 

In an safe world, fuel production, refining, and distribution fall into reliable patterns supporting price stability.  We do not live in a safe world.  Though we get only 15 percent of our fuel from the middle-east, this unstable region is the world’s oil barrel.  Turmoil there equals higher gas prices here.

Nothing is free.  In recent years both political parties have been debasing our currency in order to conceal overspending and mismanagement.  As the dollar goes down, the price of gas goes up.  Our high gas prices have more to do with missteps back home than black-gold banditry overseas. 

America imports about half the fuel we consume.   Our leaders jump up and down when OPEC producers use that dependency to manipulate supplies.  Yet that’s precisely what our government does right here at home with hyper-regulation, environmental extremism, and special interest indulgences that impair homegrown energy production. 

Authentic energy independence by the world’s largest economy will nullify much of OPEC’s power and thus ease the price of gas.  The path to that energy independence requires we either reduce consumption, increase production, or both.  We have the resources.  We do not have the will, courage, unity, or discipline.

Our current President’s leadership model is more about commotion than action.  Though he’s now imitating conservative “all of the above” energy talk, his walk is pure please and appease seduction politics.  It’s unfortunate hot air does not qualify as a viable energy resource. 

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