After Bingeing on Oil, the Country Has a Hangover

The good times rolled and horsepower roared -- the more, the better. As a result, all technical gains in fuel efficiency made from 1975 to 2006 were wiped out by consumer behavior.

To fix that problem, Congress last year turned once again to the car companies to boost fuel efficiency. And, again, Congress asked voters and consumers to do nothing.

But the market has its own rules, its own discipline, especially when it comes to supply and demand. Global demand for oil is growing at speedway pace. Oil producers are having a hard time keeping up, a task made all the more difficult by politics and violence in many countries that have exploitable oil reserves. Prices rise, as they are doing now, when demand exceeds supply.

"But there is a silver lining for us in all of the pain at the pump," said Michael J. Jackson, chairman and chief executive of AutoNation, America's largest retailer of new and used cars and trucks.

America has been saying it wants to kick the oil habit. "But we didn't begin to change our behavior until pump prices passed $3.50 a gallon for regular unleaded," Jackson said.

Consumer reaction to high gasoline prices is showing up in the showroom, according to Jackson and other industry sources. Sales of consumptive, high-horsepower vehicles, especially big trucks, are down. Sales of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles are soaring. That is why Jackson, a car dealer and staunch advocate of energy conservation who has advocated higher federal gasoline taxes, is upset with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), and one of the Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).

McCain and Clinton (now, there's a ticket!) are advocating a summer moratorium on federal gasoline and diesel taxes, they say, to help ease soaring prices.

But their proposal "is pandering of a degree that is incomprehensible to me," Jackson said in an interview. "These are the same people who spoke so passionately about conservation and global warming. What they're proposing is completely antithetical to environmental goals. It's completely nonsensical. Why are they doing this?" an exasperated Jackson asked.

One can only guess. Maybe the answer is in McCain's suggestion that we'll be in Iraq for 100 years where, as Jackson said, "we've been paying one hell of a price for oil in blood and treasure."

Here's hoping that isn't the case, that the gas-tax moratorium proposal is little more than campaign hijinks. It's morning after in America. We can't afford another binge. Turning away from addiction is painful enough. Hitting absolute bottom before deciding to turn away could be substantially worse.