Clearly, there's a lot that Barack Obama doesn't understand. For instance, he thinks there might be strategies for weaning the nation from foreign oil that don't involve more profit for American oil companies. He thinks conservation might be part of the answer. To quote Barack's good friend Paris: "As if."
Take his cockamamie suggestion that drivers make sure their tires are properly inflated before they pull out of the gas station. First, those little measuring contraptions are hard to operate; you have to know how the air goes into the tire before you can figure out how much is in there. Second, they cost money. The chrome-plated model on Lowes.com was running $3.29 when I checked today. (I, for one, wouldn't be caught dead with one of those cheesy, non-chrome-plated 99-cent versions.) And how much gas is all the fuss going to save, anyway? The U.S. Department of Energy says keeping your tires properly inflated and your wheels aligned could improve gas mileage by around 3.3 percent. First, since when do we trust the government? And second, 3.3 percent doesn't sound like very much to me.
If we're using 20 million barrels a day, then blowing up our tires would save something like 660,000 barrels a day. See what I mean? Not very much. Especially when you consider that drilling offshore could produce 200,000 barrels a day of additional oil (not to mention oil-company profits!) by the year 2030. You do the math.
Next thing you know, the government will be suggesting that we should take our cars in for regular maintenance, too--even though that's only going to improve gas mileage by a measly four percent. It just doesn't make sense to ask hard-working Americans to take care of their cars if they don't want to, when all it's going to save is some 800,000 barrels per day.
As one of President Bush's spokesman once said, ours is a blessed way of life. And if we want to drive on mushy tires, then dammit, we should be able to drive on mushy tires. Oh, and go shopping. That's the American way.
This post originally appeared on vanityfair.com