Just to lay it all out, one more time, the Clinton history on gas taxes:
In 1992, when Bill Clinton was running against Paul Tsongas for the Democratic nomination for president, Clinton promised a middle class tax cut -- which Tsongas argued was unaffordable -- while Tsongas urged and Clinton opposed an increase in the gas tax to help balance the budget and dampen demand.
On his tax cut, Clinton complained about the praise Tsongas was getting for not pandering: “I'm tired of what is cold-blooded being passed off as courage. Give me a break.” On the Tsongas gas tax, Clinton said: "It is frustrating for me to be told the only morally appropriate way to wean America off cheap foreign oil is a nickel-a-gallon gasoline tax."
Clinton won the primary and won the election. Once in the White House, he concluded that a middle class tax cut actually was unaffordable. And, he pushed through a 4.3 cent increase in the gas tax as part of a deficit-reduction package.
Either he was totally wrong about two big issues, or totally disingenuous.
In 2000, as has lately been recalled, when Hillary was running for the Senate here in NY Rick Lazio called for rescinding the increase that the Clintons had once been against and then were for, and for a summer gas tax holiday. The Clintons opposed both ideas.
Bill, at a press conference: "I’m not sure that the savings would be passed along to the consumers." Hillary told Newsday it was "a bad deal for New York and a potential bonanza for the oil companies."
Now, it's 2008. Hillary says motorists need relief from the burden that Bill, in part, imposed in 1993, so she's for the idea that she and Bill were against in 2000, when he was president and actually could have done something about it.
The Clinton campaign says her idea is different from Lazio's, because he wanted to take the money from the Highway Trust Fund which financed NY projects, whereas she will make the oil companies pay for it through a windfall profits tax. But that's not quite true. First, Lazio did not want to pay for the holiday from highway funds -- he proposed paying for it out of the surplus general revenues that existed in 2000. New York wouldn't have suffered.
Notably, Hillary did not propose a windfall profits tax in 2000 -- she just said no. Probably because the idea of using a windfall profits tax is a shell game -- prices at the pump won't change, the oil companies will make more money cause a tax won't be taken out, and then they'll give it back.
So the Clintons have gone from being against a gas tax hike to for a gas tax hike to against a gas tax holiday from their hike to for a gas tax holiday from their hike. They're considered really bright policymakers. But when political positioning is a constant, dominating influence, is it any wonder the country doesn't have an energy policy?
The issue is like many others that have come up in the presidential primaries, pitting the Clintons against their former selves.
They increase the gas tax in 1993, and in 2008 they say it's too onerous, though it wasn't in 2000. They fail to do health care, but now they're the only ones who are possibly capable of correcting the failure. They pass NAFTA (and whatever she says, Hillary's statements in favor of NAFTA are on tape), now they're the ones to save us from NAFTA. She votes to authorize the war in Iraq, now she's the only one who can get us out of Iraq. They push through trade normalization with China, now she says she's the one to stand up to China.
She even has an ad up in Indiana, complaining that Bush let a defense company called Magnequench move from Valparaiso to China.
It turns out that Bill Clinton approved the sale of the company to the Chinese in 1995. The Clintons say the company wasn't supposed to move. But then it turns out -- in 1995, the company only agreed to not move for ten years. So the move to China was perfectly predictable and anticipated when Bill approved the sale (See after jump).
Now, Hillary will make sure that doesn't happen again.
On how many issues can you claim to be a credible antidote to yourself before people start to wonder whether you actually know what you're doing?