McCain Implies That Oil Prices are Psychological

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Last updated on August 11th, 2014 at 12:04 am

Either John McCain does not understand the laws of supply and demand, or he tried to pull the wool over our eyes in Wilkes-Barre, PA today when he claimed that by lifting the executive ban on offshore drilling, President Bush changed the psychology of the oil market.

McCain said after Bush lifted the ban, “The price of oil dropped $10 a barrel.” During her daily White House press briefing, Dana Perino tried to downplay McCain’s faulty conclusion, “I don’t know if we fully deserve the credit, but I do think that it was important to send a signal to the market that we are serious about moving forward. The President tried to get Congress to work with him in a bipartisan fashion, asking them to lift their ban at the same time. Unfortunately, they’ve not even been willing to hold even a single hearing on it. So we decided to move forward ourselves, and hopefully that would spur them to action, as well.”

The real reason why oil prices have dropped is because demand is dropping. It makes no sense to suggest that symbolic lifting of a ban, which resulted in no new oil hitting the market, impacted the price. I know that McCain is trying to make the case for more offshore drilling, but he is implying that our energy crisis is a matter of psychology.

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McCain is trying to advance the myth that there is plenty of oil. We only have to go get it. This means that either McCain is lying to the American people, or he has no clue about the causes and depths of this crisis. His comments today sound a lot like “former” McCain advisor Phil Gramm who said that the recession was mental. Apparently, McCain believes that we can think our way out of the energy crisis. The more I hear from McCain, the more I start to believe that he is even more dangerous than George W. Bush, and is saying a lot.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association