This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, March 6th, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

There are many things we can blame the president for but our recently

high gas prices isn't one of them. Peter Van Doren is editor of Regulation magazine

and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He offers his thoughts.

Intuitively, we all know that the President is blamed for all things that are bad, and

the President takes credit for all things that are good.

All things that are good.

In the case of gas prices, prices people pay at the pump,

how much evidence is there that Barack Obama, this president, is responsible for that

outcome.

My sense is that this is wrapped up with the Keystone pipeline decision.

That was the immediate. I mean for bad luck from the

president's point of view the Keystone pipeline decision happens to coincide

with a two-month run-up in the price of gasoline.

And the Republicans have charged that one is related to the other in effect if the president had approved the Keystone

pipeline decision then things wouldn't be bad they're out in the pump well

they're I mean it's if you think through it, right? The

Keystone pipeline isn't critical yet for restricting Canadian imports into the

United States. And those Canadian imports aren't even the determinant of US gasoline prices because they're

not the highest cost source of gasoline that we use.

I mean, what's the hardest thing to get across to the public is that discussions

about lower cost sources of anything other than zero

...