He had three years to deal with this immediate fuel crisis and did nothing.

Talking point #352:  Obama should be voted out of office because of his failed energy policy alone.  

In June of 2008,  then Senator Barack H Obama made it clear that higher fuel prices were a thing of the future. We missed his "bail-out" mentality back then,  but he was quite clear in discribing two solutions to fast rising fuel prices: 

A. Give the folks money to deal with the problem (" . . . by putting more money into their pockets . . "), and

B.  Build more efficient cars  (". . . encouraging [adaptation], particularly US automakers . ."  

That was his solution in June.  Clearing he had no plan for an immediate solution.  But George Bush did.  In mid-July,  just weeks later,  Bush announced the opening of the permit process and off-shore drilling and,  in that announcement, alone,  prices began to fall on the next business day and fell everyday for months,  dropping from $4.56 a gallon to $1.83

Sen. OBAMA: Well, I think that we have been slow to move in a better direction when it comes to energy usage. And the president, frankly, hasn’t had an energy policy. And as a consequence, we’ve been consuming energy as if it’s infinite. We now know that our demand is badly outstripping supply with China and India growing as rapidly as they are.   I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now.

Three years later,  Obama is caught sitting on his 20 year energy solution  --  20 years before we get relief  --  and has done nothing to deal with the short term problems in spite of the fact that we are swimming in crude oil reserves  ( a 100 year supply or more).