A gas tax won’t end dependence on foreign oil, but that’s OK.

"Drill, baby, drill!" was the glibly rapacious chant that came to dominate the oil debate during the presidential race. Now "Tax, baby, tax!" is beginning to define our post-electoral national-energy-policy mood. That tax would be a gas tax, which has gathered major steam since the Detroit bailout was settled.

Is there a recession on? Is the public watching every penny? You wouldn't know it, tuning into the gas-tax fervor. Left, right, center, it hardly matters. The editorial pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer in the Weekly Standard, the staunch Republican CEO of oil-services colossus Western Refining—across the political spectrum, a general argument to slap a tax on currently rather cheap gas is gaining momentum. Even a normally horsepower-addled car-magazine editor has jumped on the bandwagon.

Much of the impetus behind this taxing urge flows from our oft-repeated desire to "free ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil." It's an effective but misleading rationale. In fact, a gas tax is not a quick way toward energy independence—it will extend our waltz with imported oil for at least another several decades. That doesn't mean it's not a good idea, though.

Forget about the loony notion that more domestic drilling would ease our plight. Whatever we'd obtain from drilling for reserves in protected areas still wouldn't be enough to greatly reduce foreign imports.

The major global oil reserves reside in places where we're allegedly not well-liked: Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia. The reserves of Iraq have had to be secured through the deployment of blood and treasure. So, understandably, many people want to curtail our business there. The taxers' assumption is that if we make gas more expensive, we'll be able to affect both consumer behavior and purchasing patterns. People will drive less and be disinclined to buy gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks. The automakers, especially the struggling Big Three in Detroit, will then be compelled to develop fleets of more fuel-efficient vehicles. Presto! No more dollars flowing into the Middle East, no more tankers of crude setting sail from the Persian Gulf for our oil-starved shores.

Remember, however, that we really don't have an effective replacement technology for our gas-powered transportation economy, an uncomfortable truth that auto writer Ralph Kinney Bennett has outlined in the magazine of the American Heritage Foundation. Electric vehicles, while promising—and inevitable—for the long term, are still mainly vaporware (and even when they aren't, they're prohibitively expensive for most buyers). Plug-in hybrids won't enter the mainstream until the market for first-generation hybrids, which has declined along with the price of gas, bounces back.