How bad is Joe Biden’s plan to bring down gas prices by using more ethanol? It’s so bad that not even Joe Biden likes it — and the White House apparently wants everyone to know it, too. Otherwise, why leak it to the Washington Post?

President Biden seemed upbeat when he visited an Iowa biofuels plant in April to talk about bringing down gas prices, standing before a large tractor as he declared that “biofuels have a role to play right now” and announced a plan to expand the use of ethanol over the summer.

But privately, Biden dismissed the policy as ineffective and questioned the value of the trip, according to two people familiar with the conversations. After returning to the White House, he hauled his senior staff, including chief of staff Ron Klain, into the Oval Office, badgering them with questions about the purpose of the event.

Biden had worried even before the announcement that it exaggerated ethanol’s ability to cut gas prices and could harm his climate goals, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and other officials urged Biden to go, arguing that it would at least help the Midwest — and the White House, after all, was desperate for ways to lower gas prices.

Even apart from the stupidity of this policy, everyone knows what Klain & Co valued in Biden’s trip — Iowa and the Midwest. They’re pandering to farmers, or more accurately, the corporate farming establishment. Klain wants to conduct standard Democratic populism by pushing ethanol as an alternative, even though (a) we’re facing food and grain shortages already, (b) putting more ethanol into gasoline won’t impact the price, and (c) it will actually make gasoline less efficient and therefore require everyone to use more of it.

Other than that, it’s brilliant.

Besides, that April appearance was not the last time that ethanol came up in a Biden speech. Biden also touted ethanol as a solution for reducing gas prices in a May 11 speech at a farm in Illinois. Biden certainly didn’t sound reluctant or dismissive of the idea at that time:

To reduce gas prices last month, I was in Iowa — a biofuel processing plant — at a biofuel processing plant. And I announced an emergency waiver to allow E15 gasoline to be sold across America during the summer. It’s an extraordinary effort, but it had to be done for this summer.

E15 uses more ethanol on crops grown here in Illinois and elsewhere around the country. And it can reduce the cost of a gallon of gasoline at the pump by 10 cents per gallon. Every little bit matters.

The White House used that speech to tout its ethanol expansion that same day:

Last month, the President mobilized American farmers to fuel America when he announced that his Administration would allow E15 gasoline—gasoline that uses a 15 percent ethanol blend—to be sold this summer.

So why is the White House now trying to backpedal away from the ethanol strategy a month later? Probably in large part because it’s a very stupid policy, but also because the messaging isn’t working. Neither are attacks on Republicans, because Republicans don’t control any power centers in Washington. Even Biden’s policy flops in Congress are attributable to Democrats objecting to massive new spending without addressing core issues of inflation.

Unfortunately, Biden doesn’t have any other ideas:

Biden and his aides have also taken to attacking Republicans more vigorously, focusing especially on a proposal published by Republican Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) that Democrats argue would make things worse by raising taxes on many Americans.

But the messaging push has not yielded any new direct measures to lower costs.

The easiest options would be for Biden to rescind his EO 13990 to remove the obstacles to exploration, extraction, and refining that he himself created. A tax package to incentivize refinery construction and exploration investment would work wonders in getting those efforts back on track. Those moves might trigger a sharp response in futures markets too, which could have an immediate impact on gas prices. However, Biden’s too married to the radical-environmental movement to do any of these, so he’s settling for the embarrassing option of going hat in hand to the “pariah state” Saudi Arabia to pull an Oliver Twist and plead for more fuel:

The White House has said Biden feels that the crown prince is a “pariah” for his role in the killing of a political opponent, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in Turkey in 2018.

Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul tainted the crown prince’s image as a reformist. The Saudi government has denied any involvement by him.

The visit would be aimed at bolstering relations with Saudi Arabia at a time when Biden is trying to find ways to lower gasoline prices in the United States.

Biden’s upcoming humiliation is entirely self-imposed. We, however, are the ones paying the price for it … literally.