We all complain about the weatherman from time to time, but has President Obama gotten anything right?

We’re moving into campaign season, and you can bet there will be a variety of topics that will catch our attention in the coming months to Election Day 2012. But here are some questions that should be asked of the candidates, and the answers that I would like to hear them give. They won’t. But I wish they would.

Q: How do you feel about abortion and the death penalty?

A: This is an interesting question. We hear Republicans tell us they are pro-life but want capital punishment. We hear Democrats argue pro-choice but are against capital punishment. If you spend the time to think this through, both sides are wrong.

Hypothetically, what if you were a member of the Dodge County Board of Supervisors and had entered into an agreement to transfer the inmates from your county jail to somplace else? What if you did this because you were certain it was going to save your county hundreds of thousands of dollars annually? My guess is that you would feel pretty good about yourself and flout your accomplishment to your constituents.

Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Why an article like this today? I started thinking. Many of our sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, are going to be graduating from high school and college in the coming days. I only wish them the best. But I started thinking about the state of the economy, the country’s financial woes, and began to wonder, “How can they fix this?”

Finally, the answer hit me — Repeal the 26th Amendment. It’s a radical idea. But it might just have merit. The argument for the amendment (40 years ago) was that since 18-year olds could drink and be drafted into military service, they should be allowed to vote. Today, 18-year olds can’t drink and the country doesn’t have a draft so that argument doesn’t work anymore (hence, the repeal of their right to vote).

I was thinking about this the other day. I started driving in 1980 and wanted to find gas prices back then. I remember paying about a buck a gallon when I started driving. The cheapest gas I can ever remember buying was about 88 cents a gallon. Since I don’t have data going back to 1980, I will use the data I have. It is provided by the EIA (Energy Information Agency).

When Clinton took office in Jan 1993, the average price of gas nationwide that week was $1.061. When he started his second term, gas prices had jumped to $1.241, or about 4.25% annually. When he left office, and Bush took over, the gas prices at Bush’s inauguration were $1.474. That means the price increased about 4.69% annually. So far, it could be said that Clinton kept the price of oil pretty consistent.

Bush took over in Jan 2001. When he started his second term, the price of gas had risen to 1.819. The price of gas was rising at just under 6% a year. I know that I haven’t accounted for the period in there where gas hit $4.00 a gallon for a little bit, but from inauguration to inauguration, it stayed consistent. When Bush finished his second term (and Obama took over), the average price for a gallon of gas was $1.847. In other words, during his last four years in office, Bush kept the price of gas from increasing at less than one percent per year!

Obama has taken gas prices from $1.84 on his inauguration day to $3.791 in just over two years. This is an increase of greater than 52% per year. Where is this going to keep going? When is enough going to be enough? And did you notice that the media is predicting gas prices of $5 by Memorial Day? I think that’s just to get us used to the idea, because that seems outrageous to me.

Tell me, can you rate a president based on gas prices? If you can, Obama is receiving a failing grade.