Oil Prices Are Up and Politicians Are Angry. Yawn.

There is seemingly no more combustible mix than high oil prices and a hotly contested election. With gasoline closing in on $4 a gallon, Washington is awash in proposals to bring down prices


But what can the White House, Congress or competing presidential candidates do to reduce gas prices in the near term? The short answer, alas, is not much.

No industrialized economy is as reliant on oil, or as obsessed with gasoline prices, as the United States, the world