Contrary to popular belief, the winner of the 2000 election will not be the man who raised the most money, or ran the most ads, or had the best spin control. The deciding issue will not be education, health care or taxes. And the swing vote will not be soccer moms, angry white men or independents. The single determining factor of the election will be the price of gas on Nov. 6, 2000. If it is significantly higher than it is now, Governor George W. Bush could win regardless of what the polls say the week before.
Gas is a hidden issue in America and in most industrialized countries. It will hardly ever show up in an opinion poll, but high gas prices are synonymous with high taxes -- in terms of the public's reaction. When the average gas price rose above $2 in the mid-west this summer, the angry public demanded that gas taxes should be reduced.
But to a certain extent, higher gas prices really are a kind of regressive tax, or one that taxes the poor more than the wealthy. That is because paying more money for gas takes more money out of low income families' pocket proportionally than it does for a family that is well off.
Just this month in Great Britain, protests over the price of gas (about $5 per gallon) and blockades of fuel-carrying trucks produced a gas shortage that nearly left hospitals without ambulances, grocery stores without food, and a prime minister with no popular support. Prime Minister Tony Blair's approval rating plummeted in the wake of the protests, and the conservative Tory Party ran even in polls with the liberal Labor Party for the first time in eight years.
In recent weeks, Vice President Al Gore took the hint from events in Britain and elsewhere in Europe and began putting pressure (by way of the Clinton administration) on OPEC countries to increase production levels in order to make sure prices do not go up over here. The OPEC countries agreed, although the increase probably will not take effect for a few weeks coincidentally -- coinciding with the final weeks of the 2000 election.
Looking beyond the politics, perhaps the bigger problem is that we are determined to drive bigger and more powerful cars and sport utility vehicles. If it wasn't necessary to fill up the Range Rover once a week, perhaps people wouldn't get so angry over gas prices. Decrying a high gas price is even more unreasonable considering the fact that current gas prices are at nearly a 25-year-low, in real terms. The average annual gas price hasn't been below $1.50 in inflation adjusted terms since 1976. Try telling that to a trucker who has kids to feed and has to take a pay-cut everytime the price of gas goes up.
There are two potential solutions to the problem. First, we could open the Alaska wilderness for oil drilling and become a competely self-supplying country. The only problem is that we would have a gigantic oil pipeline that is suscetible to accidents, or worse still terrorist attacks, and the potential for some incredible environmental disasters. The other solution is to move away from oil-based fuels and adopt alternative energy-source modes of transportation. This either means building better public transportation or adopting electric cars, (or some other non-oil based power source).
Higher gas prices will play a prominent role in the U.S. election, but the truth is that both Vice President Gore and Governor Bush will prevent gas prices from going very low. The taxes of Clinton and Gore's administration add 25 cents on average to every dollar spent on gas (though that's still lower than in Britain, where the gas tax averages 75 cents on the dollar). Although Bush could benefit from running on a promise to lower gas taxes, his overly close relationship with the oil industry means gas prices will never go so low that they hurt his friends' oil-stock prices. One of his first actions after Texas announced a budget surplus was to cut taxes on the oil companies. American voters might decide their vote based on the amount of money needed to drive to the voting booth, but it might make more sense to walk there and make the decision based on an issue in which their vote might actually make a difference.
