Obama: High Gas Prices Are Not My Fault (Even Though I Canceled Keystone and Won't Let Them Drill in the Gulf)

Obama realizes he has a big problem:

President Obama tried to deflect criticism over rising gas prices, accusing Republicans of cheering bad economic news and pleading for patience from Americans frustrated by higher costs.

"It’s the easiest thing in the world make phony election-year promises about lower gas prices," Obama told a crowd at the University of Miami on Thursday. "What’s harder is to make a serious, sustained commitment to tackle a problem that may not be solved in one year or one term or even one decade."

Notice how we can't even solve this in a decade? That's like the 10 years they told us it would take to get oil from ANWR - over 10 years ago. This has been his answer to every problem he's been presented with.

The president dismissed his political opponents’ proposals to expand oil drilling as a "bumper sticker," while he tried to make a case for his long-term goals of increasing dependence on renewable sources. Still, he acknowledged, there is no quick fix.

"There is no silver bullet, there never has been," Obama said.

The White House's shift to offense on the issue demonstrates the potency of a data point that could undermine Obama’s increasingly upbeat economic message. As tensions over Iran rise, a gallon of regular gas has inched up to $3.61, on average, up from $3.19 a year ago. Experts see no quick drop on the horizon and say high prices could be a drag on the already slow economic recovery.

It's $4.29 in So Cal right now. I'd love to see $3.61 again. We barely saw it when prices went through the downward turn this last time.

You can't divorce Obama's energy decisions in the Gulf, in Keystone, and in other oil leases he's declined from today's gas prices. It's all connected in the minds of the people who run the oil markets. They see increasing demand this summer with no increase in supply. Up go the prices.

Obama's spokesholes are touting an increase in domestic oil production, but production is not the end of it. It has to be transported and refined and we're woefully short of capacity on both of those fronts. We haven't built a refinery in this country for probably 30 years, and losing the Keystone pipeline has really put a kink in our ability to bring northern oil south to our refineries.

And it's going to get worse.