The best way to interpret the Democrats’ attempts to blame President Bush for high gas prices is as an endorsement of opening up to oil drilling the Alaskan reserve known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They’re not going to say so, of course, but that’s the logical thrust of the argument under way in the wake of the latest spike in prices at the pump. Americans, after all, are a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them.

Senator Nelson of Florida devoted the Democratic weekly radio address to bewailing what he called “$3 gasoline” and “oil company profits … soaring to unimaginable levels.” Senator Clinton issued a press release calling pump prices “totally unacceptable” and calling for a federal law to stop “price gouging.” “From small businesses to county governments, to schools, manufacturers and consumers – everyone is hurting under the pressure of increased prices at the pump and there is no relief in sight,” Mrs. Clinton said. Senator Kerry rushed out a press release earlier this month claiming that Democrats “are working to break America’s overdependence on foreign oil.”

Well, Senators Nelson, Clinton, and Kerry must have skipped economics class on the day they taught the law of supply and demand. Drilling in ANWR would increase supply, lowering prices at the pump. Yet in the most recent Senate vote on ANWR, a March 16 amendment that passed 51 to 49, all three of those Democrats – Nelson, Clinton, Kerry – who are supposedly so concerned about prices at the pump, voted against drilling.

We realize that this is an issue where people of goodwill can differ. Some may want to put wildlife and environmental conservation first. But the tradeoff of keeping potentially billions of barrels of American oil off-limits to exploration is a run-up in oil prices. That enriches not only American energy companies but also our terrorist enemies in petroleum-rich countries such as Iran.

The Democrats want to paint the rising gas prices as all bad news, but that’s not right, either. The prices are in part a consequence of the increase in global demand driven by an economic boom in America and economic development in places such as India and China. The increased fuel costs are causing consumers to car-pool and consider more fuel-efficient cars, which themselves may be better for the environment. And they are causing automakers to experiment with new technologies.

It may seem like a long time ago, but some of us remember that, before the Democrats started blaming Republicans for high gas prices, their presidential candidate, Al Gore, was a person who had called for a “carbon tax” that would have increased gas taxes to achieve just these beneficial effects. And while the Democrats demonize the American energy companies, many Republicans realize that plenty of ordinary Americans have shared in the profits of those companies through their pension funds and retirement accounts.

George W. Bush was a Texas oilman before entering politics, and Vice President Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton, an energy-services company. It’s a bit bizarre to see the president talking about America’s “addiction” to oil. But one doesn’t have to be an industry professional to see through the Democratic demagoguery. You just have to read the newspapers and respect the laws of economics. It may be too much to ask from the Democrats. But the more senators like Clinton and Kerry start holding press conferences at gas stations, the sooner the American people will catch on to the hypocrisy.