Roger Marshall and Pete Buttigieg both in one day. Lucky me | Opinion
Even when you’re a journalist, it’s extraordinarily rare when you get to talk with two prominent national politicians from opposing parties in the same day.
For me, that day was Friday, when I covered Sen. Roger Marshall at a Chamber of Commerce meeting in the morning, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (a former and possibly future presidential candidate) at a Democratic Party rally in the evening.
There have been news stories published from both Marshall’s and Buttigieg’s appearances in Wichita. Frankly, much what was said was the party-line, feed-the-base rhetoric that we’ve come to expect in politics.
So I’m just going to dispense with that.
The reason I went to their two events was seeking answers about two related issues that I think my readers really care about — the ongoing war with Iran and the price of gas at the pump.
First, Marshall, who stated the goal of the U.S. attack on Iran is to destroy the country’s nuclear program, missiles, navy and ability to fund terrorism.
“I think we’ve done 90% of that; now, as no surprise, the last 10% may be as every bit as hard as that first 90%.
“You know, as an OBGYN, I always realized when gasoline got above $4 a gallon, Americans were starting to, you know, feel squeezed as well. So hopefully the price of gasoline will come down just as quick as it went up. Time will tell. The good news is, America drills their own oil now that we’re not dependent upon them. It’s a world price, but at least these 13 million barrels a day that we’re drilling … they’re here already, so hopefully the prices will come down just as quickly.”
Now let’s hear from the man from Indiana, known as “Mayor Pete” when he rose from South Bend City Hall to the presidential race of 2020.
Buttigieg isn’t an OBGYN, but he was a naval intelligence officer deployed to Iraq during the unpleasantness there.
“I could talk all night about the madness of going into a new war in the Middle East that we didn’t have to be in,” he told a crowd of 600 at Century II on Friday night.
Afterward, I asked about gas prices so I could compare his answers with Marshall’s:
“My take on gas prices is that President Trump’s war has them up right now. Gas is about four bucks — diesel’s around $5.50, jet fuel’s about doubled. This administration came in promising to lower prices … and of course, they have directly increased gas prices with this war.
“What we’ve seen over and over again is (gas prices) never come down as quickly as they went up. That’s not a huge problem for you if you can afford a million-dollar entry fee at Mar-a-Lago (the president’s country club resort complex in Florida), but for most Americans, this is a big problem.”
I have to say that I lean more toward Buttigieg’s analysis of the situation than Marshall’s.
I’m not an OBGYN, but I work on cars a lot. I can tell you that if the last 10% of a job is going to be as hard as the first 90%, then you’re not 90% done. There’s a cosmic rule that the last bolt off is always the toughest.
Marshall is right is that increasing domestic production in recent decades does give us an advantage over earlier times, when an embargo on middle-eastern oil would have had us sitting in three-hour gas lines.
He’s also right that gas prices are world prices. But that also means the longer the Strait of Hormuz remains under siege cutting Mideastern production to a trickle, the more countries will reroute their tankers to buy American oil.
That’s great if you’re an oil company. For the rest of us, not so much, because our domestic production, while formidable, is not inexhaustible. Oil sold overseas tightens U.S. supply, which leads to higher prices here.
Denying Iran nuclear weapons is a worthy goal.
But I can’t help but think there were better ways to go about it than what we as a country have been doing of late.
Whatever happens, I think this is going to take a while.
