Barack Obama has a solution to high gas prices: use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

Sen. Barack Obama called Monday for using oil from the nation’s strategic reserves to lower gasoline prices, the second time in less than a week that he has modified a position on energy issues, as he and Sen. John McCain seek to find solutions to a topic that is increasingly dominating the presidential race.

…His proposal comes a month after Obama said he would consider using oil from the reserves only in a “genuine emergency,” such as “terrorist acts.” Aides said the plan is not a reversal because he would replace light crude oil in the reserves with less-expensive heavy crude. They also noted that the senator from Illinois last week described the country’s economic conditions as an “emergency.”

So not only is this yet another in a long line of flip flops, it’s also a stupid idea. Granted, it’s not as morally repulsive and economically damaging as his rehashed call for government sanctioned thievery (“windfall profits tax”), but it’s a blatant misuse of the strategic reserve for the purpose of electoral benefit.

The SPR was established in response to the Arab oil embargo. Its purpose is to provide a temporary cushion against physical shortages in the oil supply, thus protecting the economy from excessive damage during emergency situations and also to discourage attempts at using oil as a political weapon. The key point here is that SPR is intended to be used for transient emergencies.

There is no such physical shortage at present. The price of gasoline right now is reflective of growth in global demand, not dramatic decreases in supply. Opening SPR would likely have a depressive affect on gas prices, but it would be temporary and would do nothing to solve the issue that has created those prices in the first place. Unlike the situations SPR was designed for, this is not one we can just wait out. Furthermore, as oil demand grows the size of the reserve that is needed to successfully protect the economy during times of physical disruption increases. Using SPR now would only make it more difficult to protect the economy should a true shortage or interruption arise in the future.

Although the reserve has been used for political purposes in the past (in the nineties some was sold off to trick people into thinking the government had become fiscally responsible), such actions should be opposed. The SPR is not a vote buying slush fund to get Barack Obama elected.