Bush Ignored As Cause of Oil's Recent Plummeting

It's been a long time since I've played apologist for Bush and defended him against attacks from Democrats and the media. After all, as a conservative I can't blindly defend actions that destroy the budget or civil liberties, regardless of the identities of the people who engage in them.

But when somebody does something with a positive outcome and then gets ignored by those that illuminate all of his negative outcomes - well, that's not right.

On Monday, President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling. Now there's a lot of debate about what obstacles are still in the way of pulling oil out of the Gulf, and about how long it will take, and about how much impact it will really have on gas prices. But regardless of the direct impact, there was also a harder-to-measure psychological impact on the economic forces with this new indication that the government was willing to remove one of its previous interventions in the market.

And what happened?

Oil has plummeted $16 a barrel from its record highs over the last three days, breaking all sorts of decreasing records.

But when you browse today's headline articles about the extended fall, nowhere is Bush's decision mentioned as a cause - not even derided as a potential or negligible one. They churned out the usual reasons of concern about the weakening U.S. economy, declining demand, surprise reports about increases in stockpiles... they even took time to explain away an "explosion that damaged an oil pipeline in Nigeria’s restive south — the sort of threat to supply that has helped fuel crude’s recent rally" as something that didn't affect the falling prices.

Since they're so concerned about everything else that has to do with oil, you think they'd at least mention Bush's removal of the offshore drilling ban, even if just to insist that it had nothing to do with the price dropping.

But they don't. I browsed all the major news sites - USAToday, MSNBC, CBS, New York Times - they all had headline articles about oil's drop. CNN even had a detailed article about several causes that contributed to the fall. But not a nod to Bush or offshore drilling. Not even on FOX, where the Republican party can do no wrong.

Bush does something big to help oil prices. The next day, oil plummets a record amount. Two days later, it's fallen even farther. But in all of the media that constantly details every action that affects oil prices - up or down - in every new article about oil, there is not even a mention about Bush. And you want to tell me his action had nothing to do with the drop in oil that just happened to begin the very next day?

Something just doesn't add up.