I’VE MENTIONED BEFORE that I think we have a dysfunctional political class in this country. Here’s more evidence:

This tiff over gas and oil taxes only highlights the intellectual policy confusion – or perhaps we should say cynicism – of our politicians. They want lower prices but don’t want more production to increase supply. They want oil “independence” but they’ve declared off limits most of the big sources of domestic oil that could replace foreign imports. They want Americans to use less oil to reduce greenhouse gases but they protest higher oil prices that reduce demand. They want more oil company investment but they want to confiscate the profits from that investment. And these folks want to be President?

Sadly, one of them will be.

UPDATE: More from Philo of Alexandria.

Incoherence in energy policy and other areas stems in part from paying attention to polls. Even if every individual person had a coherent view of the subject matter—a plainly counterfactual assumption!—the collection of majority views might turn out to be incoherent.

But I think there’s a deeper reason, one that underlies dysfunctional behavior on the part of our politicians in many areas. They refuse to recognize that the policies they enact (or, in some cases, even discuss) affect incentives. So, they systematically ignore the effects of what they do. And that leads them to ignore the interactions between their various policies. They don’t see the incoherence of their positions because they never relate them to each other.

Indeed.