Corpus Christi, Texas

A Tanker at the Dock

On Tuesday the President stood at the Port of Corpus Christi and pointed at a ship. It carried, he said, about a million barrels of crude from Venezuela, bound for Texas refineries. "Gasoline and diesel prices will soon come down," he told the crowd, who had come for a campaign rally and received a lesson in petroleum logistics instead.

There is something very American about this, and something very old. Nations have always fought over what keeps their lamps lit. The Romans guarded the grain ships from Egypt as if each one were a cathedral. A country that cannot fuel itself must beg, and a country that begs does not make its own decisions. A conservative may be forgiven a small cheer at the sight of American refineries receiving oil without a tanker having to run a gauntlet.

But a good conservative also reads the label on the bottle. KIII-TV, reporting from the port, noted that the President's claim that the oil came at no cost to taxpayers was not independently verified. A tanker is a fact. Everything said about it is an argument.

The Most Honest Poll in America

The pump does not take a poll; it takes a deposit. AAA put the national average for regular at $4.2471 on Wednesday, against $3.04 a year ago. Diesel stands at $6.35, up from $3.67. The national average has not dipped below $4 since late July, and this is the first year it stayed above $4 for all of August and September. October is on pace to make it three. The all-time record, set in June 2022, is $5.0165, so we are not there, but we are not near the exit either. Prices have eased a little in the last month, down 23 cents, and every family will take that gladly.

The paradox of rising prices is that they make everything else visible. A family that never reads a foreign-policy journal will read a gas pump. When the number climbs, the abstraction we call "the Middle East" turns up in the grocery bill, the school-run budget and the cost of the truck that carries the bread. Diesel moves the food. The farmer feels it first and the shopper last, but everyone feels it.

A War Eight Months Old

AAA and others tie the climb at the pump to the war with Iran, authorized in late February, and to instability along the Strait of Hormuz. At the port the President said the war, now eight months old, would "end very soon." He defended his decision this year to depose Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, which opened the door to the oil agreement, and said the United States is "making an absolute fortune because of the situation in the Middle East."

Others see it differently. The Associated Press reports that Republican strategists privately say the war and the price of gasoline are damaging the party's hopes of holding Congress. Both things can be true: a president can be doing what he believes necessary, and a family can be paying dearly for it.

I would like to be fair to him. A man who wants a war to end while the voters ask when it will end is in an ordinary kind of trouble. Wars begin by decision and end by exhaustion, and the exhaustion is not always the enemy's.

What the Old Tradition Asks

Christian civilization did not leave us empty-handed on this question. The just-war tradition, running from St. Augustine through St. Thomas Aquinas and into the law of nations, asks hard and boring questions. Is the cause just? Is the authority legitimate? Is the intention peace, rather than glory or profit? Later writers added two more: that there be a reasonable hope of success, and that the harm done be proportionate to the good sought.

Notice the last one. It is the question the pump keeps asking on behalf of people who were never consulted. Proportion is not a liberal word or a conservative word. It is a Christian one. The tradition does not say a nation must never fight; it says fighting is a grave thing that must have an end that can be named, a peace that can be described, and a cost the people can bear.

"Soon" is a hope, not yet an end that can be named. And a war that profits the nation, as the President says, still has to be measured by what it asks of the families who pay at the pump. That is not an accusation. It is simply the question the tradition has always asked of any government, including ones we like.

A Word About Congress

One brief and respectful note. The Founders gave Congress the power to declare war and the President the command of the forces, so that the whole nation, through its representatives, would own a war's purpose and its end. We can wish, without any disloyalty, that that conversation were as plain as the price on the sign. Those who trust this President can do him no better service than to ask for it.

The Humble Remedy

What does a sensible citizen do with a $4.25 gallon? Two small things.

First, build what we can at home: refineries, pipelines, drilling, the dull machinery of independence. A tanker at Corpus Christi is a good sign; a country that never needs one is a better one.

Second, remember that a gallon of gas measures something larger than gas. It measures how long a nation can be asked to wait for a result it has not yet been shown. Patience is a virtue, and like every virtue it is a gift, not a bottomless well. Spend it carefully, for it belongs to the people at the pump.

References

• Trump rallies in Corpus Christi, touts Venezuelan oil shipment and urges Republican votes – KIII-TV (Oct. 27, 2026)
• Trump touts Venezuelan oil in Corpus Christi – San Antonio Express-News (Oct. 27, 2026)
• Republicans try to shake voter frustration over the Iran war – AP News
• AAA Fuel Prices, national average (Oct. 28, 2026) – AAA
• Gas prices for 10/28/26: National average down another 2 cents – al.com
• Just-war tradition: St. Augustine; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 40

Photo by Maria Ivanova on Unsplash