Well, Romney's endorsed a budget that explicitly requires axing most Federal funding for roads, schools and courts (and would preside over a national political party that's eschewed responsible state governance for short-term fiscal bandaids like one-time privatization paydays, leaving nothing left for infrastructure spending), so he's not a particularly good choice for folks looking for the first type of government, either.

Hoxby is pretending to think the question means changes in the past 10 years as a result of US policy over the lifetime of the States, which is reasonable given the influence of US Federal economic policies on the history of the 20th century (also, you have to assume that all foreign policy is Federal economic policy which isn't so unreasonable). Stokey is pretending to read "entirely" in place of "predominantly." What's the other dude's fake reason for saying this? This isn't to say that US economic policy is incapable of strongly influencing gas prices. One can think of ways in which epically horrible economic policy could crash the economy and send gas prices spiraling for quite a while. Obama should give a speech offering to reconfigure his economic policy in a way that guarantees a double-dip great recession as a sure-fire means of bringing down gas prices.