A key to understanding the language of politics in this country is credulity -- the willingness to believe the damnedest nonsense with no supporting evidence, as long as it appeals to one's abiding prejudice or unquenchable avarice.

Lots of Florida real estate under a foot of water was sold in years past to lots of credulous out-of-staters who believed they were getting in on a steal. (Actually, they were, but not the steal they had in mind.) More recently, some of our best bankers actually believed they could make money by giving mortgages to folks with less credit than a guy living in a cardboard box in the Bowery. And we all know some dodo today who believes Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Now we have a new winner in the credulity sweepstakes -- the belief that offshore oil drilling is a sure cure for obscene gasoline prices. It's more evidence of the power of panic to push office seekers into lousy public-policy decisions, not to mention more evidence of the triumph of hope over experience.

It wasn't always that way. Time was, both John McCain and Obama weren't fooled by claims that cheap offshore black gold could drive gasoline prices back to $2-something a gallon. Each opposed offshore drilling as a threat to the environment and a colossal con job by U.S. oil giants eager to lock up every possible oil field as a cheap way to boost their stock prices -- whether they drilled or not.

Now both have changed, though with a difference. McCain's a full-immersion convert to offshore oil as a panacea for pain at the pump. He believes the oil industry's inflated claims, or acts like he does. Obama's is a limited, modified, let's-do-a-deal kind of conversion. He'll sit still for a little drilling in the deep so long as we rescind some of the oil industry's tax breaks -- breaks, incidentally, that should mortify oil moguls as they roll up unprecedented profits while the rest of America struggles with high prices and recession. They should give them up without a fight, if only for the sake of their images.

It's a lot to ask of the oil barons. But if we're really in a "war" on terrorism that adds to gasoline costs, then aren't they war profiteers?

With Obama, it's hard to escape the feeling he knows this offshore business is a mortal scam. But he's afraid to buck the popular tide, and that's not an admirable trait in a would-be leader of the Free World. McCain, on the other hand, seems to actually believe the industry claim that oil independence is just an ocean rig (or a few thousand) away. That's credulity. And that's not much of a recommendation for leader of the Free World either.

Amid all the conflicting claims about offshore oil, two things seem indisputable:

First, we can drill right up to the shoreline -- and throw in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as well -- and we wouldn't come close to meeting our national needs or to cutting gasoline prices appreciably.

Americans require about 20 million barrels of petroleum a day, while the United States produces roughly 5 million a day. Open the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling -- even throw in drilling in federal lands out west -- and the best we could hope for is about 3 million more barrels a day, Shell Oil's former president, John Hofmeister, told Newsweek magazine. We'd still have to pay the sheiks.

Second, no matter how many oil rigs we erect on the briny or how much of the black stuff they produce, none of it will find its way into your neighborhood gasoline pump for the better part of a decade, maybe longer.

There's no quick cure. American demand for oil must be reduced, and that can't be done rapidly. The technology needed for conversion to alternative fuels is still too primitive to take up the slack and, in any case, a too-quick turn away from fossil fuels would disrupt the economy even more than a mindless rush to globalization already has done.

If there's a bright side to the oil-in-the-ocean craze, it's that it has been accompanied by a slight shift in Washington toward cracking down on the industry's unconscionable tax breaks. This has produced dire predictions that a cutoff of such incentives could halt research and development.

Who are the critics kidding? All that talk about "incentives" and R&D rings hollow. Best I can determine, no new major refinery has been built in the country in roughly 20 years. Even if we had more oil, we lack refinery capacity to process much of it. And since when is a $13 billion profit in the most recent quarter of this year for just one oil giant -- and $4-a-gallon gasoline -- not an adequate incentive to invest? We're back to credulity again.

So where do we go for truth in this cavalcade of lies? T. Boone Pickens might be a starter. He's got no beef with the industry as far as I can tell. He's become a billionaire in business. And he's no Democrat. But he's preaching the gospel of moving posthaste to alternative fuels.

As for the gas price crunch, Pickens says, to the consternation of his oil-patch buddies: "We can't drill our way out of this." Hope somebody in Washington is listening.