Joe Biden has made a complete hash of American energy policy. He took a nation that Donald Trump made energy independent and a net exporter to one that depends once again on lousy foreign powers to supply our energy needs. The result: Gas prices rose from $2.39 a gallon his first day to a high of $5.02 before settling back down a bit to $3.89 as of Friday.

Glenn Reynolds argues that a good part of the reason for this is simply Biden’s hatred for Republicans.

The Biden administration has produced so many national disasters, from the mishandling of COVID to the calamitous Afghan pullout to the runaway spending that’s led to runaway inflation to the explosion of crime in cities across America, that it’s hard to pick its biggest blunder. But President Biden’s handling of oil production could very well be the worst.

Just look at where we are. When Biden took office — not even two years ago — oil and gas were plentiful and cheap. The United States had recently become, thanks to fracking, a net energy exporter for the first time in 50 years.

Now Democrats and the media are trying to pretend that presidents have nothing to do with the price of oil and gas. But in fact, Biden shut down drilling, shut down pipelines and, with help from the “environmental and social governance” crowd in the financial industry, shut down capital to the fossil fuel industry.

Shockingly, prices skyrocketed for gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating oil and natural gas, with knock-on increases in costs for food, transportation, manufacturing, chemicals and electricity.

After initially celebrating this change of fortunes as a way to cajole people into electric vehicles, Reynolds says, the White House finally figured out that unhappy consumers make for unhappy voters. So Biden went hat in hand to the Saudis and OPEC, and he’s even now looking to reduce sanctions on Venezuela so as to get more oil from there.

The Biden administration is clearly “desperate,” Reynolds says. “But not desperate enough to undo the damage it’s done to the domestic oil industry, which is the first thing it’d do if it were serious.”

Why not? There are a lot of reasons. Greens, who dominate the Democrats, don’t like fossil fuels. But there’s no reason to think that Saudi, Russian or Venezuelan oil is any better for the planet than American oil. It’s just a question of whether the money goes to Saudis, Russians or Venezuelans or to Americans.

And I suspect that’s the real problem. The domestic oil industry enriches people — and states — Democrats don’t like. Money going to Saudis, Russians or Venezuelans is one thing, but money going to Texans, Oklahomans or South Dakotans is another. Truth is, red states and their inhabitants rank higher on the administration’s enemies list than do shady foreign nations.

He concludes:

Watching the White House flail desperately to avoid the consequences of its own actions has a certain charm. But the problem is that those consequences, as usual, fall upon Americans. It would be nice to have a White House that served all Americans instead of waging economic war on them. We don’t have one of those.

Read the whole thing here.