Bush is dead wrong. … Vice President Bush was resolved on arriving in Saudi Arabia to plead with the sheiks to restrict the production of oil. … Mr. Bush would do better to announce to Sheik Yamani that … any oil coming this way … is going to cost X plus $10 per barrel.

— William F. Buckley, The Atlanta Journal, 1986

When George H. W. Bush wanted to help his friends in the oil business, he knew what was needed, and flew off to Saudi Arabia. It was the Saudis who had, as William Buckley explained, “cost us something on the order of $400 billion or $500 billion.” And it was the Saudis who burst the price bubble at the end of 1985—not that they could have held out much longer, but they picked the time and opened their spigot.