Reason #75: Look Out Jimmy C, I’ve Got an SUV!

Jimmy Carter was serious about getting us off our oil addiction. He even had the cojones to suggest that consumers who make energy-wasting decisions should be held accountable, declaring: “Citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury.” Compared to today’s watered-down political-speak, that’s one shocking statement, isn’t it?

Twenty-six years after Carter uttered those words, George W. Bush signed his Economic Stimulus Package of 2003, which awarded $100,000 in tax credits to people who purchased a 6,000 pounds-plus SUV. (A Hummer weighs around 6,400 lbs and gets ten miles to the gallon in cross-town driving.) That’s right, Bush rewarded people for wasting oil!

How did this country go from Carter advocating sacrifice to Bush rewarding gas-guzzlers? Well, Ronnie Reagan was a big help. He entered office in 1981 and reversed nearly every positive part of Carter’s energy policy. In fact, one of the first presidential actions Reagan took was removing Carter’s solar panels from the roof of the White House. Why? Symbolism, I guess. He didn’t want anybody mistaking him for an energy conservationist, even if it would have saved taxpayers money on the White House energy bills.

Reagan believed consumer choice was sacred above everything else. If cutting down on oil dependence meant decreasing a consumer’s power to choose, then Reagan would just as much prefer that the United States stayed stuck on oil. The so-called “free market” was more important to him than reducing energy waste.

“Our national energy plan should not be a rigid set of production and conservation goals dictated by government,” Reagan said. “Our primary objective is simply for our citizens to have enough energy, and it is up to them to decide how much energy that is, and in what form and manner it will reach them. When the free market is permitted to work the way it should, millions of individual choices and judgments will produce the proper balance of supply and demand our economy needs.” Obviously, Reagan wasn’t going to crack down on gas-guzzling Cadillacs like Carter wanted to do.

NEXT: Reason #76: The Great American Streetcar Scandal