Forget Trump's speech. This one thing will decide the midterms.

By Brett Arends

It's the gas price, stupid

It's the gas price, stupid.

The conventional wisdom in the media and among us "coastal elites" is that President Trump's speech on Wednesday night was an embarrassing flop, that the war in Iran was a political blunder of the first order, and that Republicans are heading for disaster in this fall's midterm elections.

I'm going to take the under on all three - and not just because I'm so ornery, or because I think the media and the coastal elites have spent 10 years misinterpreting Donald Trump's rhetoric.

I actually think the speech may have been more politically effective than most people think, that this war could in theory still end up as a political plus, and that the midterms are going to hinge overwhelmingly on one thing above all.

That thing: Gasoline prices. (OK, and diesel prices too.)

It is now costing the average American 35% more to fill up their gas tank than it did at the start of the war just one month ago - so reports AAA. Floridians are paying an astonishing 47% more; Texans, 45% more; and North Carolinians, just over 40% more. And North Carolina is among the swing states with a competitive U.S. Senate race this November.

If gasoline prices remain anywhere near these levels for any significant length of time, then yes, the GOP can probably brace for impact this fall. The president's attempt to blame these prices on the Iranians, as if it is somehow inconceivable that they would retaliate when attacked, isn't going to fly. Nobody is going to look at a $4 price tag at the gas pumps and dismiss it as "fake news."

But if gasoline prices quickly fall back to where they were a month ago, as President Trump promised in his speech Wednesday night, that may change.

If that were to happen, the president could instead point to this war as a successful short-term operation to flatten a gangster regime that has plagued every American president since Jimmy Carter. (My point here is not to support or oppose the war - just to look at its possible domestic political impact.) A short, successful war that asserted American power and neutered the Iranian regime would probably look pretty good to a lot of Americans, especially to those in the political center or right, and especially in the more culturally conservative heartland. It's no surprise that presidential approval ratings typically jump in times of war.

I'm not suggesting a triumph for the Republicans this fall, but I do wonder if the losses will be as bad as many talking heads currently expect.

It's all about gas prices.

As for the speech? The president has been accused by the media of making a rambling, confused and empty speech. But you could also take it another way: as a speech that, bizarrely, had something for everyone. If you like saber rattling, threats and pugnacious nationalism, it was in there. The president even included a threat to bomb the Iranians "back to the stone age." But if you wanted something more moderate and international, that was in there too; at one point, President Trump said the U.S. was in the Persian Gulf "to help."

Like the famous oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece, President Trump knows that people hear what they want to hear.

It's possible to argue that this makes the speech a logical nonsense. Maybe that's true - but it doesn't mean it's rhetorically ineffective. In the meantime, I'm watching the gas prices.

-Brett Arends

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04-02-26 1616ET