For President Bush, rising oil prices have presented another opportunity to press a policy long desired by conservatives.

When he announced that he was lifting a nearly two-decade-old executive ban on offshore drilling, he was doing what he has done since he took office in 2001: exploit a crisis to advance his ideological agenda.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks set the tone for his presidency. The attacks gave Bush an opportunity to remake an aimless presidency into one defined by a simple image: the stalwart commander and war president.

Relying on Congressional allies and cowed Democrats, Bush pushed through a drastic overhaul of the nation’s domestic-spying rules (the USA Patriot Act) and the creation of a new federal agency — the Department of Homeland Security — whose employees would not be protected by public worker unions. Expanded domestic wiretapping powers and the breaking of public-employee unions have long been goals of conservatives.

The administration also used the recession that followed the attacks to enact a series of tax cuts that benefited upper-income Americans and the investor class — prime GOP constituencies — saying they would spur economic growth.

He also called for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – a plan that was nixed by Congress, but that has resurfaced with the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market and the current gas-price crisis.

His response to Hurricane Katrina, a crisis that stripped the veil of competence from the Bush administration, was no less exploitative. The president suspended the Davis-Bacon Act for work in the Gulf region. The 1931 law, which requires federal contractors to pay their workers the prevailing wage for the region in which they work, has long been opposed by Republicans and pro-business conservatives.

The offshore drilling gambit must be viewed in this context. The oil industry — a chief benefactor of the Bush White House — has long pressed for the ban to be lifted.

But rescinding the ban will do nothing in the short term to lower fuel and heating prices and very little in the long term. There just isn’t enough oil and natural gas available to expand supply enough to offset growing demand.

As with his first-term tax cuts, it is the rich who will benefit — in this case, the oil companies — from a Bush policy sold as emergency aid to average Americans.

Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press in Dayton, N.J. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.