'Presidential Embarressment About Gas'

From Victor Davis Hanson:

It is sad to see the president of the United States not telling the truth about the current gas crisis, as he barnstorms the country ridiculing those who wish to develop more domestic gas and oil.

Yes, we are pumping more oil since January 2009, but only due to prior public leases granted before he took office and new ones on private lands that came despite rather than because of his policies. Unlike Barack Obama, someone who must remain unmentioned decided that it was wise for America to lease federal lands for oil exploration that would come on line in some cases after he left office. Likewise, U.S. demand had slacked off during Obama’s tenure not due to any administration policy, unless prolonging the recession to curb demand was intended.
And to the degree that Obama has had a role in oil production, his has mostly been negative, in denying more new federal leases than did any other recent president. Yet for all the rhetoric about flat-earthers who believe in strange things like supply and demand, Obama himself knows that increasing oil supply does matter. Why? Because he is pondering again tapping the strategic oil reserve, while Democratic senators keep reminding us that the U.S. is begging the Saudis to increase their own production. So why would increased oil from a reserve or from Saudi Arabia matter in a way that increased domestic production heretofore has not?
And the president knows that just in his first three years, there has been a revolutionary change in the known oil and gas supplies of the United States. Fracking and horizontal drilling have completely altered the potential supply-and-demand dynamic in America — a development not only unappreciated by his administration, but also apparently unwelcomed as well. Would that Obama had talked as much about the potential of fracking as he has Solyndra.
Finally the president has not been candid enough to admit that his administration’s own policy heretofore has been to encourage subsidized wind and solar energy at great expense with little to show for it, while expressing a desire for fossil fuels to increase in price. On two occasions Energy Secretary Chu has acknowledged his own wish for higher gas prices, or at least not a worry that they are rising. Interior Secretary Salazar has expressed a similar lack of worry over increased gas prices. And of course the president himself during the past campaign had talked of skyrocketing energy prices as a good thing, while later worrying mostly over the abrupt rate in the rise of gas prices, rather than the fact of high prices themselves.

What Obama and his corporate cronies don't understand -maybe they do but don't care as long as they get paid- is the fact that who ever can provide or obtain an abundant supply of energy sources at an affordable cost will dominate the 21st century.Right now China understands this and we are well behind them in the race for energy superiority.