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You are here: Home / Energy / Inside the White House’s Fixation on Gas Prices

Inside the White House’s Fixation on Gas Prices

November 2, 2022 at 9:39 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Biden’s top aide wakes up almost every morning at around 3:30 a.m. in his suburban Maryland home, rolls over in bed and pulls out his iPhone to check a number critical to the fate of the presidency,” the Washington Post reports.

“The information sought by Biden’s chief of staff is not covert intelligence from a foreign government nor a top-secret national security assessment, but a publicly available tracker on AAA.com — the average national gas price, which updates in the early morning…”

“Klain’s fixation on gas prices reflects a wider sense inside the Biden administration that the president’s popularity is, to a remarkable degree, tied up in that single indicator — one that many economists regard as not nearly as important as the attention it gets. With some incredulity, White House economic officials have watched for months as the president’s approval rating moves in almost exact relation to the average national gas price.”

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About Political Wire

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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