Bill Hemmel: Clarifying the limitations of the powers of the president

To The Daily Sun,

I guess it's time to educate and inform some of the most prolific letter to the editor writers about the ways in which the world actually works. At the top of that list is Chuck Bradley, who seems to have some serious misconceptions about the powers of the president.

In his latest diatribe, Chuck writes: “On the first day in office President Joe Biden shut down our energy pipelines and destroyed American world energy dominance”. Never mind that America has never dominated world energy, the only pipeline action he took was to cancel the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Since it was only 8% completed at the time, not a single drop of Canadian crude has ever passed through it.

He then says Biden “allows (Putin) to complete the Nordstream 2 pipeline.” Actually, the Nordstream 2 pipeline runs under the Baltic Sea directly from Russia to Germany. No other countries are crossed. No United States companies are even involved in the financing — and Putin doesn't need Biden's permission to do anything. Of course, it hasn't opened yet either, so that's kind of a moot point.

It is true that the price of oil has risen dramatically lately, and with the Russian invasion of Ukraine it is today over $100 per barrel. But no U.S. president has ever had any control over the price of gasoline. Richard Nixon tried, with his price and wage controls, but that, like most Republican economic fantasies, was an unmitigated disaster (remember 1971 gas lines?) The only thing any president can do us release oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserves — and Biden did that back in November with 50 million barrels. Since it takes about three months for that to appear as gas and heating oil, we should see its effects shortly.

Likewise, the U.S. president has no control over the Chinese government either, and can no more “control” Xi than Putin. What President Biden has done is to re-establish universal international respect for the U.S. after a disastrous four years of isolationist diplomacy. Thank you, President Joe.

Bill Hemmel

Moultonborough