The public's demands are unfocused and amorphous, and they come in an election year. This adds to the difficulties faced by politicians, who are scrambling to find ways to respond. President George W. Bush has requested authority from Congress to increase the fuel efficiency standards of cars. Last week, he also announced plans to halt deposits into the (nearly full) Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and to ease certain environmental regulations pertaining to refinery switchovers. And Congress is following Bush's lead: It is debating one bill that seeks somehow to reduce gasoline prices by raising taxes on oil companies; another proposal would offer a rebate to gasoline users.

In short, we have entered what could aptly be called "the silly season" -- a perennial feature in American politics. An election looms. The president is unpopular, and his party is running from him. The Democrats have a realistic chance to capturing one chamber of Congress, possibly even both, but they remain rudderless -- even on energy policy. Both sides, it seems, are desperate -- and as a result, May and June will be a dangerous period during which, in efforts to "fix" the energy mess, politicians could take decisions that either fail to achieve their stated goals or, worse, carry significant unintended consequences.

Unintended Consequences

Typically, decisions made during the silly season tend to be fairly benign. They are seen most often in pork-barrel spending projects that, though they increase debt over the long term, only barely add to the risks of a serious financial crash.

But the silly season also has a dark side, particularly when government makes decisions quickly or under substantial public pressure. These dangers are well-known in Washington.

Consider, for example, the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting regulation, passed in 2002 during a manic effort by Congress to show its disgust with accounting practices that led to the meltdowns of Enron and other corporations and to prevent such events from occurring again. Congress created a popular but unworkable, illogical and sometimes counterproductive set of regulations. Sarbanes-Oxley scares business -- which was, of course, one of the goals -- but the problem is, the law does this so effectively that it appears to be keeping some businesses out of the United States. It has proved a boon to the London Stock Exchange, and some in Britain muse that unless the U.S. law is changed, London could re-emerge as the financial center of the globe.

In another twist, environmental activists in the United States are relying on fears of such hurried, reactive policymaking by Congress as part of their strategy to bring about new climate change regulations. The strategy assumes that if arguments in favor of action on climate change gain enough momentum with the public -- and if a handful of states pass their own climate change bills -- the business lobby will appeal to Washington to develop a harmonizing federal strategy on carbon dioxide emissions. In other words, environmentalists are counting on the notion that industry will be terrified by the idea of the federal government passing rapid, poorly thought-out policies that, from a business perspective, might do more harm than good. The environmental activists are betting that business will step in to head off that possibility, take control of the issue in Washington and present a carbon cap proposal that will pass.

The Politics of Action

When it comes to gasoline prices, it is a political imperative that members of Congress act. High prices are hurting consumers, who are looking to the government to solve their problems. This, many would say, is why they pay taxes.

But the solutions to high gasoline prices are strategic, not tactical. They cannot be fixed by congressional fiat before the November election. This puts policymakers in a bind. The only question is whether Congress will do dumb things in response to public pressure, whether it will find some way to get what its members need politically (while doing as little harm as possible to the economy), or whether it will actually do something significant, with positive implications for the long term.

The easiest path forward, of course, is to continue down that already charted: To pander to the public, winning as many political points as possible with symbolic proposals that bolster each congressman's standing in his party and home district. This is "been there, done that" territory. For instance, Republicans frequently have put forward proposals to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil drilling, knowing full well that Democrats would put all their efforts into defeating them. Saving the ANWR has been a key plank in the Democratic Party's environmental platform; opening it was central to the GOP's. But for the Democrats, what it cost to save ANWR was frequently the political capital needed to push forward increases in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements. A perfect deadlock was created in which both political parties got what they needed from the debate -- political points -- but the United States got a policy that encouraged neither development nor conservation of energy resources.

The country now is reaping the results. Given the highly politicized atmosphere in Washington and the election campaign season, now is not the best time to finish the job of building the country's energy policy. The best that voters realistically can expect is political wheel-spinning.

To this point, the president appears to have blundered tactically. He already has taken most of the easier options available to him by stopping fills to the SPR and removing environmental regulations on refiners. But he might have done well to let Congress take the lead on at least one of these moves; probably the most productive thing Bush could have done for his own standing would be to have had Republicans in Congress force him (feigning reluctance) to take these steps. Had that been the case, it would have been Congress that now would be seen to be taking action -- even if against the president; Bush, for his part, could have fallen back on the contention (which is, in fact, true) that the moves were merely cosmetic. Pundits would have accused Congress -- but not Bush, who has multiple other problems to worry about -- of pandering, but at least voters would perceive action on someone's part rather than gridlock.

The wrinkle in this, however, is that with his popularity plummeting, Bush apparently felt he needed all the points he could win on energy prices; thus, he took on the role of panderer-in-chief. Meanwhile, Congress -- particularly the leadership -- still has the challenge of showing what will be done to reduce gasoline prices. There are no good options.

It is particularly damaging when government leaders act in a way that is popular with voters and cause people to think that a problem is fixed when it really is not. In the end, the perception among voters is not that government is incompetent, but rather that it is corrupt. This is the risk that Congress runs if action is taken now. The most obvious solution, it would seem, would be for congressional leaders to dial back the public's expectations about what can be done on gasoline prices. Barring that, the next option would be to take a series of meaningless steps, carefully plotted so as not to have any deleterious effects on the economy or future energy strategy.

We do not expect either strategy to be pursued. During frenzies, federal policymakers tend to behave in shortsighted, unpredictable ways.

Conclusion

Congress realizes that U.S. energy prices are a strategic rather than tactical issue. Washington can do little at this point to reduce gasoline prices substantially, but Congress does have the power to change long-term energy policy. A panic induced by price shocks is not the ideal time for such a project, but there can be certain advantages: for instance, people are far more willing to make sacrifices during price shocks, and they are more open to new and different ideas. Bush could not have said in January that the country is "addicted to oil" had prices not risen in the preceding 12 months.

The most meaningful change likely to emerge from this frenzy is increased fuel-efficiency standards for cars. CAFE standards were bound to change anyway, given the widening divergence between the Environmental Protection Agency's methods of studying auto efficiency and those used by the Department of Transportation, but all sides can win political points by addressing the issue now. Other conservation measures are also likely to pass, including incentives for renewable energy technologies and alternative fuels.

Energy supply issues also might draw some attention during the coming months. Proposals to explore for oil in ANWR will likely never receive enough votes, as this option has become a political "third rail" for too many Democrats and moderate Republicans. However, if proposals for drilling in ANWR are again defeated, pressure will build for other areas to be opened for oil and gas exploration, including the Outer Continental Shelf.

There will be change to U.S. energy policy over the next two or three months. Most of the short-term, politically oriented moves likely will be benign, but some important strategic issues are now on the table. Most news headlines will be devoted to the swift and desperate efforts, but certain long-term goals of the environmentalist and business communities could make it to the negotiating table within this new context -- and thus, some shifts in these areas could be possible.