Politics & Power Quote by Gary Miller

Numbers do the moralizing here. By staging a before-and-after - 30 percent imported in 1973, more than 60 percent now - Gary Miller turns energy dependence into a plain, almost parental disappointment: we knew this lesson during the oil shocks, and we still didn’t learn it. The intent is less to educate than to indict. Statistics aren’t neutral in political speech; they’re a way to make blame feel empirical.

The subtext is a familiar Washington move: convert a painful, immediate consumer problem (high gas prices) into a long-running governance failure (“no comprehensive national energy policy”). That phrasing quietly spreads culpability across administrations and parties, which is useful if you want to sound above partisanship while also teeing up your side’s preferred fixes. “Comprehensive” is the key word - a promise of seriousness that can mean drilling, conservation, alternative energy, efficiency standards, new refining capacity, or all of the above, depending on the audience.

Context matters: 1973 isn’t just a date, it’s a civic scar. Invoking it signals vulnerability to foreign suppliers and the national humiliation of being priced and pressured from abroad. Miller’s line also hints at a deeper American contradiction: we treat cheap fuel like an entitlement, yet resist the trade-offs (higher taxes, regulatory discipline, long-term investment) that real energy strategy requires.

It works because it frames gas prices as policy, not fate - and because it makes “decades of drift” sound like the real scandal, not today’s spike at the pump.