In class and occasionally in print, I’ve tried to debunk conspiracy theories ranging from Pearl Harbor, to the Kennedy Assassination, to the CIA and Watergate. I have no evidence for what follows but isn’t it curious that the price of gasoline has dropped by over 30 percent in most locales, and continues to drop the closer we get to the election. A decline in demand is the reason the experts give us but what do we really know about production in places like Saudi Arabia? In the United States, the summer driving season is over but has demand declined so precipitously in China and India, for example?

Over the last month, as gas prices have plummeted, consumer confidence has risen along with the stock market, while potential voters have told pollsters that the state of the economy is becoming less of a problem for them. Did the administration warn its pals in Riyadh that a Democratic Congress could bring renewed investigations into 9/11, a serious program for alternate energy, and a cut and run in Iraq that would leave the Iranians triumphant? Or did the Saudis figure all that out by themselves?

In 1960, Nikita Khrushchev boasted that he elected Kennedy by withholding the release of captured American fliers until Nixon had been deposited in the dustbin of history. Eight years later, the Soviets offered cash-strapped Hubert Humphrey money under the table (which he refused) to help his campaign in the same election where Saigon was “voting” for Nixon. Is our latest October surprise the astounding fall in the price of gasoline?