“We cannot drill our way out of this,” Pelosi reminds us. True enough. If we only drill in ANWR, if we continue to decline to exploit ocean reserves and the mind-boggling amount of oil shale available to us, then it’s true, drilling won’t do much good. And since we can’t solve the problem solely by drilling, why bother trying to solve it in part, no? A lefty friend made the argument to me today that rising gas prices are actually sort of a virtue because the higher they go the more we’ll be forced to carpool and use public transportation, and the more that’ll wean us from our oil dependency. To which I reply, sounds like a fine idea for a campaign platform. Let His Holiness run on the idea: $10 a gallon and carpools for everyone. He seems to be open to suggestion; let’s see what that considerable charm of his can accomplish when he really puts it to use. Yes we can be crippled by inflation.

As you watch, bear one thing steadily in mind. We had a Republican president and a Republican Congress for six years, five of them post-9/11 when everyone could see very clearly where the revenue was going. And yet here we are. Too late, boys, too late.