Hertzberg doesn't buy Obama's answer on gas prices:
It’s understandable that [Obama] feels he can’t say what I assume he believes: that gas prices should go up—and that the difference between three dollars a gallon and six or seven or eight dollars a gallon should go to the American people and their government, not to the oil kingdoms, the oil dictatorships, and the oil companies. The sensible, if at present unachievable, solution would be (a) to impose a whopping great gasoline tax, as part of a whopping great tax on all carbon-dioxide-emitting fossil fuels, and (b) to rebate the proceeds to the American people and the American economy by cutting or eliminating the payroll tax.
Along the same lines, Ryan Avent's interest is piqued by a paper suggesting that higher gas taxes change consumer behavior more than gas price increases due to market forces. Jared Bernstein, also writing about the politics of oil, points out that the US can't set global oil prices:
The United States holds only a couple of percent of known global oil reserves, and we produce less than 10% of total crude. These are binding constraints that no president can change. I’m not suggesting that our domestic production has no effect on prices. But oil is a global commodity and most of it is under the land of other countries. Our contribution to supply will always be a drop in the bucket and will thus generally be a matter of cents on the gallon, not dollars.
Relatedly, Brad Plumer shines light on the oil speculation boogyman.
The Dish 