Price of gas when Obama took office: $1.81

$1.81: The price of gas when Obama took office.

In the past few days, I have seen this meme spreading on Facebook — for example as wall photos posted by Veterans Against Occupy Wall Street and Red White Blue News.com. Back in September, Michele Bachmann was saying, “The day that President Obama took office, gasoline was $1.79 a gallon.”

Many Facebook commenters instinctively suspect that something is wrong with the figure, that the price of gasoline could not possibly have been so low just three years ago. To some, it must therefore be B.S.

Thanks to the Internet, however, we can actually look things up. The U.S. Energy Information Administration keeps records of the prices of petroleum. You can see similar historical gas price charts at GasBuddy.com.

As it turns out, the figure is true enough. Look at this graph:

See the arrow where President Obama takes office? The price of unleaded, regular gasoline in January 2009 was $1.79. Obama assumed office on January 20, 2009. The February gasoline price was $1.93. So yes, $1.81 sounds about right.

But now look at the six months before Obama takes office. The price dropped from $4.09 in July to just $1.69 in December. The price of gasoline was actually higher under President Bush than it has ever been since — yet it suddenly dropped like a rock in the months before President Obama took office.

What was happening during that time which might account for such a price drop?

Oh, I remember now: The U.S. economy collapsed, resulting in the greatest financial disaster since the Great Depression. When the economy comes to a screeching halt like that, it really affects gasoline demand, and therefore prices for a time.

It’s funny how just three years after the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, many Americans have already forgotten how disasterously Bush’s presidency ended and instead blame Obama for any residual discomfort. As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Do you long for the days of a ruined economy and the resultant cheap gasoline? Then vote Republican this November, and we may get to relive it all over again.