It is really unbelievable. I am quite serious when I say this–I have been stunned by the suicidal political instincts of the Biden Administration and their congressional leaders to slavishly bow down to their progressive wing, whose agenda is so toxic to the country and the Democratic Party. Everyone looked for some sort of reboot of the Biden agenda in the SOTU speech, and we got nothing of substance in terms of policy.* Instead, after the generally good introduction on Ukraine (albeit too positive) we saw the re-packaging of the same bad policies that Mr. Manchin had previously killed.** This was a blown opportunity, as the Biden Sanders/AOC agenda is a millstone around the neck of the Democratic members of the House and Senate. After getting ahead of the public mood in ’93-94, Mr. Clinton moved decisively toward the center, declaring the “end of big government” and working with Republicans on the budget and welfare reform, and he easily won reelection. Yet Mr. Biden is absolutely intransigent with respect to the progressive agenda, when undoubtedly a significant pivot could minimize the losses his party will face in the fall.

Nowhere is this unwillingness to change course more evident than his embrace of the radical climate agenda and his attack on domestic production of fossil fuels. Rather than any movement toward domestic production, in the face of rising inflation especially in energy costs, the Biden Administration spent the last year begging Russia and OPEC to produce more oil. And as the Russia war on Ukraine continues, Mr. Biden is unwilling to close off their supply of oil lest it raise gasoline prices further and lead to the American people really focusing on the administration’s hostility to domestic production. Reports out in the last two days suggest that now Mr. Biden will personally visit Saudi Arabia to promote more oil production, a nation candidate Biden called a Pariah state who we should make pay a price for their murder of a journalist. And he has sent a team to Venezuela to seek some sort of rapprochement with the Maduro regime (and undoubtedly the ask to expand oil, potentially to include Western help to revitalize their energy infrastructure). And in the worst deal of all, the Biden Administration continues to work to let the Iranians out of the box with their nuclear blackmail. It is the worst because everybody with any ounce of realism knows the Iranians won’t stop. The left has long believed that dialogue and diplomacy are sufficient to constrain the evils of this world, which the conservative movement has long rejected.*** One of the biggest bright spots of the energy revolution that made us Saudi America over the last 15 years is precisely the fact that alternative energy suppliers really are the worst of the worst globally–we were finally not sending $$$ to tyrants across the globe. And yet that is now the path the Biden Administration says we must make. Why? According to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg,

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, the host of “The 11th Hour,” acknowledged the president “does not set the price of gas,” but she argued “he can influence it.” “And while releasing some strategic reserves matters, given how much has been released, it is really just a drop in the bucket,” she said. “Are there things, and I realize this is controversial, it has huge environmental impacts, could the president possibly consider authorizing the Keystone Pipeline? Or working something out with Iran?” “Look,” Buttigieg replied, “the president has said that all options are on the table. But we also need to make sure that we are not galloping after permanent solutions to immediate short term problems, where more strategic and tactical actions in the short term that can make a difference, like what you have with the strategic reserve, which exists partly in order to respond to situations like this.”

We don’t want permanent solutions precisely because they would be permanent–if you give the American people cheaper energy they won’t want higher energy costs. Investment in oil production capability has dramatically fallen in the last five years, in part due to the continued political pressure against the industry. Yet we are content to have much dirtier production of energy from Russia and other places, filling the world’s worst actors with richer coffers. When asked about the Keystone Pipeline, the response from the Administration is that it wouldn’t do anything “for years.” At the surface level, that seems to make sense–if policy changes can’t lead to more domestic oil for 6-18 months, then it doesn’t do anything to help prices today. But that intuition is false, betraying a lack of understanding of commodities markets. A large part of the current spike in oil is speculative buying (or hoarding as this article says), as traders are seeing this war lasting longer and the administration’s unwillingness to expand domestic production and concluding that prices in the future will be much higher, so they are buying current production and taking it out of current supply to sell it in the future at hoped-for much higher prices. Before you condemn speculation, make sure you understand the social benefit of such speculation (conveniently oil is the example):

So if you don’t like speculators, if you don’t like corrupt and wicked regimes, and if you don’t like high energy costs, then the answer is clear: Open up the spigots. Today. Better yet yesterday. It’s time to change course Mr. Biden. As Lord Keynes famously said, “when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” The facts have dramatically changed, as Elon Musk tweeted a few days ago:

* Yes Mr. Biden hammered the progressive call for “Defund the Police,” but progressives themselves have generally abandoned that messaging if not the goal.

** And the same dishonesty and racialized stoking of tensions over voting rights. Shame Mr. Biden.

*** As the most absurd illustration of this, the Administration’s faith was no where more evident than after the Afghanistan debacle President Biden said “We’ve ended 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan.  And as we close this period of relentless war, we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy (emphasis added).” What do you think Mr. Putin thought about a change of emphasis to “relentless diplomacy?”