With the average price of gas in the Los Angeles area at $4.31 a gallon, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean sends voters a message: Don't blame the president.
Or, better said, don't blame this president.
"The president is not responsible for the prices," said Dean, "anymore than President Reagan was responsible for gas prices, or President Bush was responsible for the gas prices."
Bush wasn't responsible?!
Dean and the other Dems who blamed President George W. Bush apparently think that the nation suffers from short-term memory loss. So, let's go to the videotape:
Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, August 2008: "We could have headed off $4 a gallon gas and begun to end the tyranny of oil in our time. Instead the president decided to spend our money on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy."
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., July 2006: "We are seeing...a government run for the oil companies."
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., May 2008: "In every corner of our country we're paying record gas prices...it's a crisis for every American family. This week, Democrats offered a new plan - a clean break from the failed Bush policies that were literally written by the big oil companies."
Ex-Speaker Pelosi, August 2008: "During the past eight years, our energy policy has been directed by the two oilmen in the White House...and left consumers paying record prices at the pump."
As for Howard "I did not hold Bush responsible" Dean, what did he say as chairman of the DNC in August 2005?
"President Bush has sat on his hands as ordinary Americans and their communities have been blindsided by skyrocketing gas prices. While oil companies have enjoyed record profits, President Bush's lack of leadership has allowed the gas price crisis to spiral out of control.... It is time for President Bush and the Republicans in Washington to put the pedal to the metal and steer us toward a sound strategy for reducing gas prices."
In 2006, 73 percent of Democrats, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, blamed President George W. Bush for high gas prices. A new WaPo/ABC poll finds only 33 percent of Democrats hold Obama responsible for gas prices, preferring to blame the oil companies, speculators, unrest in the Middle East - virtually anything other than the policies of the current non-Republican in the White House.
Only a few short years ago, Democrats agreed with Dean. After Obama's election, however, Democrats whipped out the Etch-A-Sketch and erased eight Bush years of insisting that presidential decisions affect the supply of oil and therefore its price. This makes them demagogues then - and hypocrites now.
