Wait, aren't high gas prices what Democrats want?

So why aren’t Democrats making the case that the spike in prices is a good thing? Isn’t this basically our energy policy these days? How we “win the future”? If high energy prices were to damage President Barack Obama’s re-election prospects, it would be ironic, considering the left has been telling us to set aside our “dependency” — or, as our most recent Republican president put it, “addiction” — for a long time.

If Democrats had their way, after all, we would be enjoying the economic results of cap-and-trade policy these days — a program designed to increase the cost of energy by creating false demand in a fabricated market. As the theory goes, if you inflate the price of fossil fuels, the barbarians might finally start putting thought into how peat moss might be able to power a toaster.

In 2008, Steven Chu, Obama’s (and, sadly, our own) future secretary of energy (sic) lamented, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” The president, when asked whether he thought $4-a-gallon gas prices were good for the American economy, said, “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment.”