By Brendan McLaughlin

The call to suspend the federal tax on gasoline over the summer was as transparent as it was dishonest. Depriving government of money to maintain highways in exchange for a few political points was a bad deal for everyone, but the damage would have been limited and short-lived.  The hysterical rush to erect oil derricks off Pass-a-Grille is likewise misguided, but generations would live with the results.

Like so many policy debates that devolve into partisan warfare, the casualty in this question of whether to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling  is common sense. Opening up select Gulf real estate to oil exploration within the current 125 mile limit may well be a smart investment. That won't happen though, because both sides have staked out the extreme positions of no new drilling vs.naming Daniel Day Lewis as Interior Secretary.

  The former oil executive running the country for the last seven years used the debate over our energy future to blame the democrats for the high price of gas and oil.   The president said:

"I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past," Bush said. "Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions."

The accusation conjures the image of a vast ocean of sweet light crude being guarded by Nancy Pelosi herself, when in fact, oil companies are a long way from even exploring the additional acreage on and offshore, that have been opened up in the last several years.  The claim by John McCain that lifting the moratorium will bring short term price relief at the pumps has been so widely discredited that it strips the whole argument of credibility. Politicians from George Bush to John McCain to Charlie Crist to Mike Fasano obviously believe this issue is a winner. But as long as offshore drilling is sold as a curative to $4.00 a gallon gasoline, I think voters will be wary. After all, we're putting that expensive gas into our tanks. We're not sniffing the fumes.