...Then Why Do It?

There's a bumper sticker that I associate with Ben & Jerry's, it goes like this: "If it's not fun, why do it?"  I need to appropriate that format and apply it to politics (of course!).  My new question is "If you can't measure it, why do it?"

Today, while scanning the news on Yahoo, I came across this headline: "Under fire over high gas prices, Obama calls for tighter curbs on oil market manipulation." Because I'm a free-market kind of guy, I was on guard right away.  "Looks like pandering," I thought.  But perhaps it will have some statistics in it, something that I can think about.  Heck, maybe it would even get me to change my mind.

Then I get to this gem:

"You won't find the administration making projections about the particular impact, or the particular price impact, of any particular policy," one official told reporters on condition of anonymity.  "We would leave that to outside analysts to disentangle."

Wait, what?  You mean that the President is advocating a policy when he doesn't  even have a prediction of it's impact?

If the press release were honest, this is what it would say: "Gas prices are high, and despite clear evidence supporting this, we think people and corporations are manipulating the market.  Therefore, we're going to increase the regulation on their business, but no one has any idea as to whether it will help lower gas prices or not."

This kind of non-rigorous thinking is not exclusive to any one party.  Heck, it's not even exclusive to politicians.  However, given that the person making this claim is the person in charge, and his words and actions have ramifications that can be felt for years, possibly generations, I think that he owes it to us to be specific.

Instead of not "...making projections about the particular impact...of any particular policy..."I would like to see our policy makers (and the policy wonks who support them) say things like: "This policy will have the effect of lowering the price of gas to under $3 within a month.  If however, we do not see this effect, we will repeal this policy."  While the specific numbers don't really matter, the important thing is that they draw a line in the sand so we can tell if their policy succeeds or falls flat on its face.

And that would be fun!