Flight Suit, Pants Suit...Whatever

Five years ago today the war in Iraq ended. We know that for a fact because our president told us, right there on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. And so said the sign behind him, "Mission Accomplished." Ever since then we have simply been mopping up. Good thing, too, that we got it over with as quickly as we did. There is no telling how much a five-year war would have cost us.

P.S.--That circus stunt in a jumpsuit, obviously staged for a future campaign ad, debased the office of the Presidency almost as badly as Tricky Dick's dispatch of his "plumbers" to the Watergate complex.

"Fill 'er up, it's on me!" said Hillary Clinton yesterday to a sheet-metal worker in South Bend, Indiana. Actually, she said it to the cameras. But Jason Wilfing did not mind being a mere stage accomplice; he was getting 63 bucks worth of free gas for his boss's Ford F-250. Good deal.

And has Hillary got a great deal for the rest of us, too! With no bandwagon of her own, she jumped on John McCain's and seconded the call for a moratorium on federal motor fuel taxes this summer. That's right, Mr. Middle Class Consumer, you should get a break from having to pay 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline into a fund that pays for highway repairs. Put that money right back into your pocket. We will offset the resulting revenue shortfall by, now get this, billing the OIL COMPANIES!

Believing that Exxon will not pass a new windfall profits tax right back to the consumer is like believing that the Iraq War is over. Exxon charges what it does because it can. It is a matter of supply and demand. Removing the fuel tax will not increase supply, but may very well increase demand, bringing the pump price back to the original balance point. We will be right back where we started, except with new costs of compliance for extracting a new tax. McCain's proposal would be even worse: what is now being paid as a federal tax will eventually go to the oil companies instead, inflating their profits and executive compensations. This favors the little guy?

When Hillary has time actually to think a little more about a gas-tax holiday, she will recognize the proposal for what it is: a bad idea. But who has time to think? Hillary is campaigning 24/7, trying to survive from one primary to the next, hustling votes any way she can. Her fixation on the short term reminds me, indeed, of Aviator Dubya himself.