In politics, Bill Clinton once said, it's better to be "strong and wrong" than weak and right, which is why Hillary Clinton has joined John McCain in shamelessly pandering for votes by calling for a suspension of the federal gasoline tax.

Both of them have to know it's a terrible idea - just try to find a halfway intelligent economist or environmentalist who says otherwise - that will mean peanuts for you but millions for oil companies. It won't do a thing to make gas any cheaper or more plentiful, but clearly they don't care. It's more important to win votes - no matter how cheaply or crassly - than to be honest with us, and they're criticizing Barack Obamafor having the audacity to call them on it.

"This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer," Obama said. "It's an idea designed to get them through an election."

He's right.

"Score one for Obama," Greg Mankiw, a former chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers who also advised the Romney campaign, says, according to Reuters. "In light of the side effects associated with driving ... gasoline taxes should be higher than they are, not lower."

Yes, a Republican adviser to a Republican president says the gas tax should be higher - $1 higher, according to an op-ed piece he wrote almost two years ago. But Clinton and McCain want to suspend the tax - 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents a gallon on diesel - for the summer. Both say it will ease the pain of soaring gas prices, which averaged $3.61 a gallon Wednesday. And just how much relief will you get?

About $30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's 33 cents a day.

There's a good chance you'll never see that 30 bucks because oil companies are "just going to push up the price of the gas by almost the size of the tax cut," Eric Toder of the non-partisan Urban Institute told Reuters. Clinton's proposal to make up for that sleight of hand with a windfall tax on oil companies won't fly, and she knows it. As Jonathan Alter of Newsweek notes, the Senate blocked just such a tax in December.

As we noted when McCain floated his tax holiday proposal two weeks ago, the federal gas tax funds the federal Highway Trust Fund, which finances road projects nationwide and is already facing a $3.4 billion shortfall. And the federal transportation department says every $1 billion in highway spending creates 34,779 jobs, which means the a gas tax holiday could cost 300,000 construction jobs.

But perhaps worst of all, eliminating the tax will lead to increased consumption. Make something cheaper and people will use more of it. It's basic economics. That's the wrong signal to send when the head of OPEC says oil could hit $200 a barrel before the end of the year and scientists increasingly agree we've got about 40 years to cut emissions by 80 percent if we're to get a handle on global warming.

"I think it's a very bad idea," says Gilbert Metclaf, an economics professor at Tufts University. "If we want people to invest in energy-saving cars, we need some assurance that the higher price paid for these cars is going to pay off through fuel savings. It's a very short-sighted, counterproductive proposal."

If anything, the candidates should be bold and call for an increase in the federal gas tax. It hasn't been raised in 15 years, and would have to be increased to 27 cents just to keep up with inflation. Raising the gasoline tax by 10 cents a year for five years would raise $65 billion, says David Sandalow, author of "Freedom from Oil". We'd still be paying far less for gasoline than Europe and investing in our future. Think what we could accomplish if that money were dedicated to developing alternatives to a resource that is only growing scarcer - and more expensive.

Don't count on that to happen. It would require leadership, and it's easier to pander than lead.