Is This The Clueless Campaign?

Traditionally, this is the point in a presidential election year when very little happens.

The presidential nominees have been chosen. They just haven't been officially nominated at their parties' conventions. That will come in a couple of months.

What usually happens at this time in a presidential election year is, simply, the candidates take a little time away from the public eye. They might plot their fall campaign strategies or discuss potential running mates with their advisers, but they make very few public appearances (with the exception of some fund-raising events) and generally keep a low profile.

Well, that's what's been done in the past.

Today, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama embarked on an 11-day tour on economic issues.

Many of the states that are expected to be the "battlegrounds" in this campaign have been targeted on this tour. Obama was in North Carolina today. Tomorrow, he will be in Missouri and Iowa. And he's scheduled to visit Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania during his tour.

Gas prices keep going up. In nearly half of the states, the average price now exceeds $4.00/gallon. And I've heard that a majority of Americans believe the price will go past $5.00/gallon at some point this year.

We already heard from John McCain on the subject. He wants to drop the federal gas tax this summer -- which doesn't sound like a good idea to me. It amounts to -- what? -- 18 cents/gallon, which won't make much difference to the average consumer. But it's going to cut revenue that is earmarked for road maintenance, which probably means some people will lose their jobs and a lot of repairs that need to be done on our highways won't get done.

(And if those repairs somehow do get done, they'll get done on the cheap, which is almost the same as not getting them done at all.)

Hillary Clinton favored the summer holiday from the federal tax, too.

It's a bad idea, and Obama rightfully ridiculed her for it during the primaries.

It sounds -- to me, anyway -- like a bribe.

But is Obama offering anything better? If he is, I haven't heard it yet.

Today, he suggested slapping the major oil companies with a windfall profits tax. And using the proceeds to help the poor with their energy costs.

Kind of a Robin Hood policy.

Let's see. If my memory serves me correctly, we had a windfall profits tax in 1980 -- the final year of Jimmy Carter's presidency.

A windfall profits tax may temporarily satisfy the public's desire to punish the big oil companies. But it isn't likely to raise nearly as much money as Obama says it will, and it won't do anything to improve supply, if the past is any guide.

The 1980 windfall profits tax was projected to bring in nearly $400 billion in revenue, but it actually brought in about one-fifth that amount. And domestic oil producers reduced production in the United States.

It didn't work.

And it doesn't appear to me that either presidential candidate knows what to do about high fuel prices in 2008.

Even so, David Paul Kuhn writes in Politico that record gas prices can hurt McCain in the general election. With a Republican in the White House, it is clearly to McCain's advantage to propose a genuinely workable solution to the problem.

It is not essential for Obama, but it certainly would be reassuring for voters to see him engaged in a search for a long-term solution.

"Voters usually blame a poor economy on the party that controls the presidency," Kuhn observes, "and there are few more potent reminders of hard economic times than the high cost of fuel at the pump."