As if her dump idea for a gas-tax holiday weren’t enough, now she’s literally pandering at the gas station:
SOUTH BEND, Ind. – With all of her talk about high gas prices and suspending the federal gas tax, when was the last time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton pumped gas, anyway?
Well, it wasn’t this morning, despite her for-the-cameras visit to a Marathon gas station in South Bend to draw attention to her fight with Senator Barack Obama over steps to lower gas prices. The Clinton campaign arranged for Mrs. Clinton to “commute” with a sheet-metal worker on his way to work; she rode shotgun in a white Ford pick-up truck and to stop by the gas station to fret over the cost of filling up.
No shock, but David O. Selznick could not have staged the thing better.
The Marathon gas station was effectively closed to other customers for more than an hour as 30 reporters and photographers gathered at the station to await Mrs. Clinton’s visit. A caravan of 10 vehicles – 10! – finally arrived, including a van carrying cameramen to record the drive, and a white Ford pick-up truck driven by the “commuter,” Jason Allen Wilfing, with Mrs. Clinton in the passenger seat.
And it turned out the pick-up belonged to Mr. Wilfing’s boss; they used it so they could fit a Secret Service agent and Mrs. Clinton’s traveling aide in the back seat.
Reporters speculated beforehand about whether Mrs. Clinton would pump the gas herself, but it was not to be. Once parked, Mr.Wilfing pumped the gas ($3.76 a gallon) while Mrs. Clinton did most of the chatting about her concerns about high gas prices and how they affect everything from workers’ pocketbooks to trucking and shipping costs to companies’ bottom line.
(…)
Mrs. Clinton said she had not pumped gas in a long time, given the Secret Service role in her life since 1992. Aides said that she had a driver’s license and that she sometimes used a hybrid S.U.V. back home in New York.
Well, you know, pumping gas is for the little people.
