So long, John -- gas is $4 a gallon

When gas prices rise, incumbent parties hit the skids. If only it were that simple.

By Andrew Leonard

Read more: Presidential Race, Environment, Andrew Leonard, John McCain, Opinion, Energy Policy

March 10, 2008 | On March 7, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States reached $3.17. Four dollars a gallon by summertime is well within the realm of possibility -- even if that comes as a surprise to the current occupant of the White House. Record gas prices? During an election year? What could it mean?

Let's review the historical record.

When Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president in January 1977, the average price of a gallon of regular leaded gasoline was 60 cents.

By November 1980, the price had doubled to $1.19. So long, Jimmy!

Four years later, the price had fallen to $1.11. Incumbent Ronald Reagan obliterated Walter Mondale.

In November 1988, the average price dropped even further, down to 90 cents. Vice President George H.W. Bush annihilated Michael Dukakis.

The United States phased out leaded gas in 1991, so for comparison purposes we must switch to unleaded. In November 1988, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded was 95 cents. But four years later it had jumped to $1.15.

Sayonara, George the First!

By November 1996, the average price had risen 10 cents, to $1.25. But incumbent Bill Clinton still managed to beat Bob Dole anyway. The exception that proves the rule? Normalcy soon reasserted itself: In November 2000, the price shot all the way up to $1.55, and Bush the Second "beat" Al Gore.

So far, so good. The numbers tell a remarkably consistent story, notwithstanding the minor blip of Clinton vs. Dole. Otherwise, in every single case, it's the gas price, stupid. Rising pain at the pump spelled doom for the political party that held the White House.

The only significant exception to this pattern came in November 2004. The average price of gas had jumped again, to a sky-high $2.00, but Bush won reelection anyway.

And now we're up to $3.17, with $4.00 coming. Indeed, if you look at a chart of gas prices, unadjusted for inflation, going back to 1979, Americans have never seen anything quite like the great gas-price surge of the Bush presidency. The trend line is considerably less alarming if you adjust for inflation, but even then, the spike of the last seven years can be compared only to that of Jimmy Carter era.

So the Republicans are finished, right? Democrats can blissfully ignore a spring full of increasingly nasty campaigning between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They can wave away the vexing headache of unseated Florida and Michigan delegates and dismiss the nightmare of a brokered convention. With gas prices on their side, how could John McCain possibly have a chance? If Americans are facing $4 a gallon at the pump as Election Day approaches, history tells us that the odds are against continued Republican occupancy of the White House.

But wait. As every statistician reminds him- or herself while showering each morning, correlation is not causation. Did gas prices do Jimmy Carter in, or did the Iran hostage crisis? What helped Bill Clinton more: pump prices or an H. Ross Perot candidacy that split the conservative vote? In 2004, George W. Bush used the threat of terrorism and the ongoing Iraq war to club John Kerry. A terrorist attack in the fall of 2008 could just as easily hand the White House to McCain.

High gas prices could also just be one data point among many in periods when the overall economy is in a downturn. Carter and George H.W. Bush, one could argue, were mortally wounded by an economic malaise that spread beyond energy prices. Clinton's 1996 win, conversely, can be explained on the grounds that the economy was starting to do quite nicely in the mid-'90s. If the U.S. economy goes into a recession in 2008 (if it hasn't already begun to do so), then the Republicans will be fighting against a major headwind, with or without the help of four-buck gasoline.

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