Abstract Anxiety

I live just outside of Boston. On most days, my morning commute consists of trundling from my bedroom to the den where my laptop awaits. When I get ambitious or antsy, I run out to Starbucks for a latte or Whole Foods for some provisions. The Starbucks is about 300 yards from my house. Sometimes I walk it! But even when I don’t walk, I don’t use much gas. The Whole Foods is a couple of miles from my house; that I never walk, but my fuel consumption is minimal. My principal leisure activity is heading off to the golf course. That’s four miles away. Every now and then I take a more ambitious journey, but as you can see I have a carbon footprint that would make me eligible for an “Al Gore Responsible Steward of the Environment” prize. And I haven’t even had to put phoney-baloney solar panels on my house to display my environmental purity.

My minimal amount of driving means I fill up my gas tank on average a little more than once a month. With a 12-13 gallon purchase per fill-up, I’m dropping about $50 each time I visit my pal Eric at the neighborhood service station. So the sharp increase from $2 a gallon to $4 a gallon costs me a grand total of roughly $25 per month. To date, I have found this burden bearable.

Please note–compared to many a pundit, I’m a virtual Bruce Springsteen who could pen pointless ballads about the glories of the open road. The Atlantic Monthly‘s Andrew Sullivan had a tedious post Sunday night in which he paid tribute to his own lifetime refusal to learn how to drive. Sullivan’s blogging wingman at the Atlantic, Matthew Yglesias, has frequently mentioned how he’s never owned a car. Sullivan concluded his homage to his non-driving ways by burbling, “$4 gas? Maybe it will be good for us.” What you mean “us,” Kemo Sabe? Are 300 million Americans supposed to begin blogging for a living and bicycling to the Whole Foods?

Andrew’s fellow big-city resident, Barack Obama, expressed a similar sentiment regarding $4 a gallon gas a little while ago. While he expressed reservations regarding how quickly the price of gas had gone up, Obama was comfortable with the new expense. In true Dukakis-fashion, he couldn’t refrain from looking forward to the economic tough-love the new prices would bring. He was palpably enthusiastic about the many salubrious effects that unaffordable gas would have on a spoiled citizenry.

Of course, Obama resides more in my category than Andrew’s. Like me he lives in a city, and when he has to fill up his car, he’s fortunate to be able to do so without wincing. And if high gas prices were to make him reduce his carbon footprint and get more exercise, we would all be the better for it. Especially if it resulted in more pictures of him looking silly in a bicycle helmet.

But there’s an entire country that exists outside greater Boston and Hyde Park, Chicago. Unless you failed several American history courses, you probably know that America is a nation of wide-open spaces. A few weeks ago, I took a golf trip to what may be the finest golf course in the country. It’s located in eastern Colorado right near the Nebraska border. Arrogant city slicker types like Barack Obama would probably refer to it as being in “the middle of nowhere” unless he was seeking the denizens’ votes. The center of the town where the golf course resides has a population of approximately 2,000. The next town is roughly 60 miles away.

The golf course has a thriving caddie program. Many of the caddies come from the next town over or even farther away. That means they have a minimum of a 120 mile round trip commute. Unfortunately and unfairly, caddies don’t get paid as well as United States senators–a great caddie makes $80 per round. If you do a little math, you can see that $4/gallon gas is taking a serious bite out of their income. And yet still they caddie on, not because they have a love of lugging golf bags but because it is a good financial opportunity.

Frankly, and I don’t mean to brag here, but it didn’t take this trip to Colorado to open my eyes to the difficulties most Americans have with high gas prices. Most Americans don’t live in big cities, and if they wanted to seriously cut down on their gas usage they would have to quit their current jobs, a move that even Barack Obama could likely understand would harm their standard of living. Needless to say, zipping into a showroom and putt-putting away in a shiny new Prius isn’t a feasible option for most people who are feeling the pinch at the pump.

The fact that our pundit class can’t imagine how most of the country lives is hardly surprising. But Barack Obama is another story. He’s running for president of the United States, not king of Hyde Park. If he wins, he’ll be leader of all the people, not just the ones who live in cities and for whom their cars are luxuries. It shows a shocking lack of imagination that he can’t deduce how painful hyper-expensive gasoline is for most Americans. Either that, or his enthusiasm for $4 a gallon gas evidences a callous indifference.

There’s a political opportunity here for Republicans. It’s true and barely deniable that the Bush administration has been dilatory in crafting a forward-looking energy policy. But fortunately, the Bush administration won’t be on the ballot in November.

Instead, John McCain will. While Republicans justifiably gnash their teeth over McCain’s refusal to tap the ANWR resources, McCain does bring some solid credentials to this fight. Let’s not forget that this is a unique presidential candidate who in two different cycles told Iowans where they could stick their wasteful ethanol subsidies and willingly paid the political price for doing so.

But even more to McCain’s advantage is the fact that his political rivals think the proper reply to $4 a gallon gas is some form of “Bring it on.”

If the McCain campaign can’t spy the opportunity here, then the Republican situation this campaign season is truly hopeless.

Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.