In a 2006 cover story in FP, the columnist Thomas Friedman described what he called "The First Law of Petropolitics." In it, Friedman revealed an inverse relationship between oil prices and the kindliness of petrocrats: As oil prices surge, the rulers of oil-producing countries tend to become inflated jerks; when prices are low, they are high-minded pussy cats.

Yet for all its genius, Friedman's law is limited: He was talking about pure petro-states such as Russia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Isn't the behavior of freely elected leaders in developed economies influenced by any oil commandments?

I raise this question while observing President Barack Obama and oil companies act upon some other mutually understood political principle in the heat of the election-year campaign: Over the last week or so, American oil giants Chevron (see interview below) and ExxonMobil have suggested that Obama wise up and embrace America's inner-petrostate. Obama has responded by embracing his inner-cudgel, urging oil companies to accept a non-fossil fuel future, and meanwhile surrender $4 billion in tax breaks.

Oil is pivotal in the campaign platform of Obama's opponents. We see this most recently in finger-pointing over gasoline prices. But gasoline is not the operative hothouse for the top-line political battle. Instead, it is a sideshow to the central backdrop, which is the nation's high-stakes oil boom, a projected surge in the U.S. oil supply over the coming decade from shale oil, deepwater Gulf of Mexico reserves and imports from Canada's oil sands.

The opposing sides are capitalizing on high gas prices to advance competing, long-existing agendas -- Big Oil to pry open coveted basins underlying coastal and federal areas, and Obama to keep incubating still-early clean-energy technology.

Toward these aims, the oil industry's strategy is to persuade Americans that these closed-off lands are all that stand between U.S. independence from foreign oil, and continued fealty to those fellows governed by Friedman's First Law. For Obama, it is to contextualize the oil boom as big but historically ephemeral: Americans can bask in their gas-guzzling ways now, but must also begin to pave the way for the inescapable post-hydrocarbon era.

To state this as a corollary, there is a direct relationship between the vigor of an oil boom, and the temperature of high-flown political rhetoric. (Given the apparent hurt feelings afflicting both sides, one observes another active corollary -- a direct association between rising wealth and thinning skin, a sublaw that seems to straddle the oil and financial industries.)

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A question of power in Saudi Arabia: The al-Saud family of Riyadh has two principal tasks -- securing its rule, and guaranteeing the smooth, long-term flow of oil income. When these dual objectives come in conflict -- such as they have in the Arab Spring -- the former takes precedence. So it is that, with King Abdullah having allocated a whopping $129 billion in social spending over five years in order to pre-empt restiveness within his population, he has cancelled plans for a $100 billion buildup of the Kingdom's oil production capacity. Saudi Arabia can currently produce about 12.5 million barrels of oil a day, and it had plans to increase capacity to 15 million barrels a day by 2020. In the Financial Times, Aramco CEO Khalid al-Falih said the expansion is no longer necessary because of increased supplies announced elsewhere. The new Saudi plans could exacerbate a projected significant tightening of global supplies in the coming years. But Barclays Capital's Amrita Sen, quoted in the FT, suggested that the rationale is the family's core agenda: "The current focus of Saudi is on domestic social spending on the back of [the] Arab Spring."

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