Time for Some Jawboning

here kitty brings us this blast from the past:

In January 2000, with oil prices at nearly $28 a barrel, Bush called on President Clinton to ``jawbone OPEC'' to get prices to retreat.

``What I think the president ought to do,'' he said while campaigning in New Hampshire where heating oil prices were soaring, ``is he ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say, `We expect you to open your spigots!'''

Two months later Bush was in Florida and suggested as president he would use his ``political capital'' with Mideast producers. ``These are countries where it wasn't all that long ago that a President Bush helped Kuwait,'' he reminded voters, alluding to his father and the Gulf War.

``I think Americans ought to be asking where's all the capital we earned overseas after defending some of our OPEC nation friends?'' Bush said in October during a campaign speech in Knoxville, Tenn.