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Gas Prices, Crude Oil, & the US President

People love the internet forwards (and previously email forwards) of cherry-picked data that shows how someone was just so amazing that even the corn held more vitamins while so-and-so was in office. Rather than tackle the entire forward, we’ll hit one piece of it: Gas Prices.

Gas prices aren’t $1.90 now, they aren’t likely to be $8.00 next year, and President’s have little direct impact on gas prices. Here’s AAA’s Gas Analysis for the first week of the Biden Administration. Note the fun chart which shows how much fluctuation has occurred over the last 4 years, and that it’s been on an upward swing for a while:

If you care to learn about gas prices, you can refer to this Congressional Research Report which was designed to explain prepared to legislators what factors impact gas prices.

Crude oil (supply, demand, availability, etc) is the main cost in increased gas prices, followed by the cost of refining, distribution, marketing, and taxes.

US Department of Energy

I hope you would now think twice before you share on that meme about gas prices under whichever President. Was crude oil almost $3.50 a gallon at one point under Obama, yes. However, if he’s fully responsible for that, you have to credit him with bringing it down to $2.14 two years later. (hint: You don’t have to because the US President doesn’t have much control over international crude oil supply and demand.)

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Executive Orders & A Massive Start

Constitution > Legislation > Executive Orders

When it comes to policy, you don’t want to continually prioritize flash over substance. Often you’ll find that when the flash fades, very little remains. Unfortunately, this doesn’t hold true for the hearts and minds of the general public – that damage will take much more work to repair. Constitutional amendments are the hardest to achieve but the most enduring, whereas executive orders are the easiest put into place.

When you have an individual that wants to be the “Uncompromising Man of Action” their options are limited and not long-lasting. While some may have heavily utilized the executive order and strained the limits of what could be achieved by this tool, those orders are just as easily tossed aside by the preference of the next administration.

Sweet Seventeen (15-19?)

A lot of outlets are counting seventeen Executive Orders, but it depends on if you count memos, or if he instructed another agency to make the announcement. Regardless, we are talking about a lot of executive orders for the first day (and a busy second as well). These were all major items that could have been stretched out for weeks of positive press and impression of accomplishment while they did a lot of administrative (boring) clean up and restructuring.

Biden has been here before, and he knew people who had done ALL these jobs before. When a previous administration trashes the entire operational infrastructure and places themselves at the center of everything, it would take a lot of work to rebuild a system from scratch. But if you bring back people who already know how to do their job, you can spend the two months you were frozen out of White House Updates, and just have plans for hitting the ground running.

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