Inside the White House’s Fixation on Gas Prices

“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.”