Relative Advice

We hope you had a good weekend with your Mom, or maybe some relatives - and we hoped you had some good discussions with them too. From coast to coast, and everywhere in between, when folks haven't been talking about the death of Bin Laden this past week, it seems like the subject of gas prices have often elbowed in to fill the void.

Not surprisingly, President Obama already pivoted back to the issue of gas prices in his weekly address on Saturday. At about the same time he spoke, most of us noticed a drop in the price of gas of about a nickel a gallon, on average.

While we're still glad that President Obama and his team got Bin Laden and have continued the assault on Al Qaeda-aligned forces, we agree with the conventional wisdom on next year's Presidential election. The 2012 contest won't likely be focused on issues of security or foreign policy as much as it will be issues of domestic financial stability, growth, and the price of fuel.

In fact, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com reiterated those facts about the economy and the presidential race in early March, and again about ten days ago.

For Americans who often display the collective memory retention of a gnat, we remind you that President George H.W. Bush won a significant military victory over a then-dangerous Saddam Hussein in 1991. Because the economy was still suffering more than Americans were willing to endure, Bush lost solidly to the then mostly unknown Bill Clinton in 1992.

As Clinton himself might say about next year's race, it's still the economy, stupid.

While five dollar per gallon gas is looking less likely now, most Americans won't see a significant decrease in the price at the pump right away. Still, experts say gas prices are likely to continue their downward trend - for a short time anyway.

For some politicians focused blindly on the 2012 Presidential election, we think it's far too early to be screaming about the price of gas now as a measure for who will win next year.

There are always those who believe the price of gas is too high, no matter what its price is, just as there are those who think that Bin Laden is really having kebobs with Elvis, or that Barack Hussein Obama is really a secret Kenyan muslim.

There will always be those who believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts.

That the price of fuel in the United States will be going down soon isn't a myth. That much is an educated guess, based on statistical facts. All the same, the price of a gallon of go-juice for your car isn't likely to hit 99¢ a gallon again in our lifetimes.

The price of gasoline WILL likely drop a few cents this week, no matter where you are - but whether that matters to you is all relative to factors like whether you've got a job, or a job that pays enough.

Those political pundits who think a raise or drop in the price of gas of a nickel or a dime now is going to swing the election decisively for or against Barack Obama nineteen months from now are as deluded as their friends in the "Birther" and "Deather" clans.