WASHINGTON - With gas prices climbing and little relief in sight, President Obama is scrambling to get ahead of the latest potential obstacle to his reelection bid, even as Republicans are making plans to exploit the issue.
No one seems more aware of the electoral peril than Obama himself.
"My poll numbers go up and down depending on the latest crisis, and right now gas prices are weighing heavily on people," he told Democratic donors in Los Angeles last week.
In fact, Obama raised the issue unsolicited in a series of town meetings in Virginia, California, and Nevada that were ostensibly about his deficit-reduction plan. And he made the gas spike the subject of his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday.
"It's just another burden when things were already pretty tough," he said.
As Obama well knows, Americans don't hesitate to punish politicians when the cost of filling their tanks goes through the roof. For presidents, responding to sudden surges is a recurring frustration.
"These gas prices are killing you right now," Obama said at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., acknowledging that many Americans can't afford new fuel-efficient cars and that must drive older models. . . . For some, he said, the cost of a fill-up has all but erased the benefit of the payroll-tax holiday that he and congressional Republicans agreed on in December.
On Saturday, Obama insisted in his radio and Internet address that the best answer was a long-term drive to develop alternatives to fossil fuel. He also renewed calls to end $4 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies.
Republicans contend that high gas prices are the inevitable result of an administration that they accuse of stifling domestic drilling, and that placed new curbs on offshore exploration after last spring's BP oil spill.
"The administration has declared what can only be described as a war on American energy," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).
"Obama is vulnerable on gas prices, and the Republicans have and will exploit this as a wedge issue," said James Thurber, who directs the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.
Legislative aides report that House Republicans are considering a series of hearings and floor votes on measures to boost domestic oil and gas production when Congress returns from its Easter break.
Obama has ordered the Justice Department to form a task force to look for fraud or manipulation in the oil markets. It will root out any abuses, he told a town meeting in Reno, Nev. The president is among those who have said the surging price of crude is caused by worries about political upheaval in the Arab world and increasing world demand.
Obama's focus on the issue came as a New York Times/CBS News poll published Thursday found that 70 percent of the public believes the country is headed in the wrong direction. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
