So President Obama is now going to personally set much stricter fuel-economy and emissions standards for vehicles, better known as CAFE standards.

My first thought is: this is obviously a guy who reacts to power like a kid in a candy store. Welcome to life under boy king Barack, a leader who resembles nothing so much as that eight-year-old Chinese emperor who ordered his retainers to eat disgusting things and commit suicide just for the wonder of seeing them obey. Apart from the unseemliness of it, you have to ask when people will start saying: “Cool your jets, Mr. Spock! There are people who are better trained for that job than you are.”

Obama is trying to fundamentally change the economics of auto transport. He’s doing things that will make it cost a lot more in real terms to drive a mile in your vehicle. You always have to stress the “real” when discussing costs in the coming high-inflation world. It will cost you more to buy and to drive your vehicle, as a percentage of your total income. In the future, you’ll have to give up more of the other things you buy in order to drive as much as you do now.

And this is completely congruent with something the Left has been saying for decades: there is a “socialized cost” to economic activity that isn’t captured in how we operate today. Every time you fire up your SUV and tool on down the highway, you’re creating damage to the environment, the climate, and America’s trade and geopolitical positions (the latter by increasing our dependence on imported oil) that aren’t reflected in what it costs you to do it.

It’s long been one of the Left’s most cherished priorities to force individuals and industry to pay those costs directly. The objective here is quite explicitly to force less of an activity (driving) to occur, by bringing its immediately-experienced cost into line with what is believed to be its true cost.

So far, Obama hasn’t faced up to this political challenge. Given the tenets of his Alinskyite training, he may never do so. What he’s been saying instead is that if he forces you and me to drive less, our economy will grow rather than shrink. This will happen because of all the green jobs he’ll create.

Obviously it will take a lot more labor to produce goods when you can’t substitute efficiency-generating production inputs like motor transport for labor. Put that together with the desire (which Obama has already vividly shown) to systematically increase the cost of labor by artificially propping up unions, and it will take you a lot more effort to produce the same economic output.

And you certainly will be a lot more personally well-off if you don’t have to schlep the kids to soccer practice and ballet lessons all afternoon because you can’t afford the gasoline. Won’t you? And when you have to give up your suburban house for an apartment closer to your job, your commute will get a lot shorter. You’ll be able to catch up on reading the New York Times. It’s a win-win.

If Obama really is thinking this through to the extent that he buys his own argument, that necessarily means he’s prepared to create jobs by reducing the total amount of economic value that we create. The French tried to do a precisely analogous thing a few years back by legislating that no one would be allowed to work more than 35 hours a week. (The standard work-week in France at the time was 40 hours.) They didn’t get higher growth or higher employment, but rather the opposite.

I don’t think Obama is that stupid or that disingenuous. I think rather that he’s pulling a scam on us. I think he knows very, very well that the point of this is what the Left has been clamoring for all these years, which is to reverse the socialization of the purported indirect costs of motor transport. In this view, it’s axiomatic that we all should drive less, regardless of the cost to productivity and to quality of life, because America will be a better, greener place if we do so.

Forget about the impact of ceding this much personal choice to the President of the United States. That’s a psychic and economic cost that goes with the territory when you embrace state capitalism. It’s part of the power that intoxicates Obama so much. It’s like the Kings of old, who could and did impoverish disfavored subjects by depriving them of things like their security interest on money they had lent, as Obama did to Chrysler’s senior debtholders. You want to be sure you don’t make this guy angry with you.

If Obama were really to be honest about what he’s trying to do, he’d be forced to explain to us about the indirect costs of motor transport that we’re not paying today. He would have to lay out the case that when you drive your car or truck, you’re damaging the earth, America’s security, and the interest of other Americans in having a quieter, gentler world. And you ought to pay for those things.

Then we could have an open debate about whether those socialized indirect costs are real and worth mitigating. Of course, this path (quaintly known as “democracy”) would create big problems for Obama, who’s in a hurry to get this done while his popularity lasts. If you’re uncharitably disposed toward him, you’d suspect he doesn’t want to ask us to decide the question because he doesn’t like what the answer will probably be. If you agree with him on the merits, you’re probably glad he doesn’t ask.

Being honest about the true motivations and costs of policy changes is an approach that failed miserably for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. Lying about what you’re trying to do works so much better. And when you enjoy the unquestioned support, bordering on sycophancy, of so many journalists whose job (in theory, at least) is to ask tough questions, then lying is definitely the least costly way for Obama to proceed.

Francis Cianfrocca is a Senior Editor of The New Ledger. Read more and comment at his blog.