Like many of his initiatives, President Biden’s action on high gas prices is almost 100% symbolic. It will have no significant impact at the pump. You could argue that it’s better than doing nothing, but arithmetic says something else.
The Difference between Doing Nothing and Barely Anything
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
7 Comments. Leave new
A thousand feet. Not far enough. Not nearly far enough to get away from these Biden imbeciles.
It’s a hard fought battle between the Neo-liberal leaders of the Democrats and the Neo-Nazi leaders of the party formerly known as Republicans as to which one can do the most to prevent any of the platform of the progressives. I’m pretty sure Trump and Co. are gleeful as to how that will all turn out.
Despite what the anti-Biden critics claim, presidents have almost no influence over the price of gasoline in either direction. Does that mean that we should be calling these arithmetically challenged individuals the anti-Biden imbeciles?
I would argue that if one has “almost no influence” on an issue, one shouldn’t take credit for doing things about it. The latter contradicts the former. To be fair, though, seeing how long Joe Biden has been a plagiarist (since before the first moon landing), he has a decades-long tradition of taking credit for other people’s work without attributing it correctly.
Biden can’t do much, but he can do a little. Doing a little is better than doing nothing. Would you rather he did nothing? On the flip side, you didn’t object to my saying “almost no influence” — if you agree, then why aren’t you hurling those “arithmetically challenged” and “imbecile” at Biden’s critics? At worst Biden is to blame for “a thousand feet.”
I am not a fan of Biden. Of the last ten or so Democratic candidates for president, Biden was tied for last in my book. But even I can see when others dip below the low Biden threshold. I am seeing those who criticize the gasoline prices as if Biden were to blame.
Sometimes, as Lincoln Steffens pointed out, doing very little is worse than doing nothing at all. Consider Obamacare. It went through because the dismal state of healthcare was widely understood by the public and the media like as a pressing concern. After the passage of the affordable care act, however, it disappeared from the headlines. Never mind the fact that the ACA didn’t solve the problem. We would literally have been better off without Obamacare because now we would still be thinking that healthcare was something that we needed to address.
In the case of high gas prices, it’s not exactly the same because everyone can obviously see that the government isn’t really having any kind of real impact on them. Prices are dropping, yes, but that’s for other reasons. This is more of a general comment on the idea that lamely trying in a symbolic way is something that we should give a politician credit for. We should not.
The point of the comic is to point out that many people use “at least he’s trying” as a panacea, a one-size-fits-all absolution. As Ted puts it, “Symbolic ‘action’ fools us into thinking things’ll be OK.” As Ted also points out, we’re talking about a rounding error. That 1,000 feet from three cents of gas? I could get greater savings by checking my tire pressure, rolling up the windows, removing the back seat, and driving a few miles an hour slower.
Biden isn’t alone in this misdirecting behavior. But he’s the one in charge. When it was Trump, I was criticizing Trump. When it was Cheney, I was criticizing him. And all the others, in their turn. Improve the gas mileage to 100 miles a gallon, it won’t change the fundamental trajectory of the problem. We can no longer engage in the fantastical delusion that we live in a participation-trophy world in which “trying” matters.