No cite…can’t find one at the moment. It’s been quite a few days so it’s should be public knowledge.
Basically Obama said that the high gas prices weren’t so bad but the shock of such a swift increase was what was bad.
Has this gotten the play it should in the media? Wouldn’t a comment by a republican that was so out of touch with the average american have gotten more play?
Note: The debate is not whether high gas prices are good for those who believe that alternative fuels are the answer…most of you do and I’m sure it is.
I fail to see how this is out of touch. Had gas prices gone up less quickly, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal. I expect to get a larger cost of living raise at the beginning of the fiscal year, as a large portion of the workforce commutes. If they had gone up over, say, three years, I’d get a relatively smaller cost of living raise to compensate for it.
The idea is, you have to have time to make a behavior change in response to rising gas prices. A gradual rise allows that behavior change to happen in a relatively painless way-and you don’t have everyone hitting crunch point at the same time.
A fast hike does not allow for such behavior adjustment- you still own the same car, make the same commute, have the same job, suppliers are still selling the same cars, etc. You are essentially trapped by the higher prices because you haven’t been able to prepare.
Obama is correct on this, and perhaps more in touch economically than I have any right to expect from a presidential candidate, at least recently. It may bite him on the ass, but that’s politics, it does not mean that he is out of touch except in the sense that a great many people are ponderously stupid on this issue and he is not.
Exactly how do you see that it’s out of touch? We’ve known for years that our gas prices were low compared to other nations. We’ve known we were way to dependent on oil. We should have been doing more to explore energy alternatives but we weren’t because we had plenty of affordable energy available. If this is the slap in the pocketbook we needed to deal with it so be it.
It doesn’t strike me as out of touch at all. One of the things that turned this long-time republican into an Obama supporter was his honesty about the federal gas-tax holiday supported by McCain and Clinton a few months ago. Only Obama (among the candidates) was willing to say that this proposal would not lower gas prices. Now, he appears to be the only one saying that the unfortunate rise in gas prices may have the beneficial effect of making alternatives more competitive sooner.
Hey, gotta give the OP some credit here – all the anti-Obama threads he’s started recently have been remarkably consistent in their intellectual rigor, wot?
I can’t express how tired it makes me feel to see you trying to manufacture outrage like this.
His comment didn’t make him appear “out of touch with the average American”- it was what we around here call “honest”. And it saddens me that you can’t (or won’t) see that.
It reminds me of overhearing my roommate telling his mom about the things Obama has said recently. Last night, for example, he was telling her about what Obama’s “bitter” comment in Pennsylvania. I guess he just heard about it this week.
“Out of touch”? How? It’s the summation of every gas-related conversation I’ve had with people at parties, on the street and at the pump for the last three years:
“Man, $2 a gallon!” (Then $2.50, then $3, now $4.50…)
“Yeah, I know! Crazy, isn’t it?”
“Well, I suppose it’s only fair. You know, they’ve been paying a lot more in other countries for years.”
“Yep. Still hard though. It’s just so fast! If it went up more slowly, it would have been easier to deal with.”
“I know! It’s the sticker shock, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Guess maybe now the car folks will start taking hybrids and hydrogen cars more seriously.”
“Sure, now that the folks in SUV’s are hurting enough to consider buying them.”
Economically speaking, I think he’s made the right comment. Supply and price shocks do no one any good. So far, what he’s said in the media (or from what I glimpse from CNN) about the economy has either been neutral or mostly good. I don’t like it when he says “now the current President never had a plan for this…, or, this is the President’s fault for x or y or z” and, not being asked for giving a plan himself. IOW, I don’t mind his criticism, but I do mind that he isn’t asked for a solution or doesn’t offer one himself.
Now that I think about it, from what I’ve seen, granted I don’t watch enough, so maybe my sample size is too small, he doesn’t directly attack McCain as bad as the President. Obama, you’re not running against Bush.
That fits with Obama’s rhetorical strategy – and a sound one it is under the circumstances – which is to conflate the two in the public mind and make the case that McCain is running for Bush’s third term. McCain has only left himself open to that by flipflopping on so many issues where he formerly opposed the Administration (and I find myself wondering why).
We can see the benefits already - SUV sales down, transit ridership up.
While I certainly understand why he said gradual would be better, I wonder if a gradual increase to $4.00 a gallon ($4.50 around here) would have had the same effect. Like the frog in the frying pan, people adjusted fine to a jump to $3.00, so maybe the shock was needed.