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The "debate" over the gasoline-tax holiday proposed by John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton was summed up on PBS's The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer on April 30, when an economist critical of the plan faced off against--nobody.

"They said they couldn't find another economist to defend it," said Len Burman, a former Clinton administration official, who appeared on the show alone.

It wasn't a scheduling conflict. Since then, Democratic candidate Barack Obama has been joined by a deafening chorus of prominent economists who are condemning the proposal to suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gasoline tax for the summer. Despite the conventional wisdom that Americans will always endorse a tax break, polls and primary voting indicate that the public is siding with the economists. This case hints that another near-unanimous view of economists--that higher energy taxes are the best way to encourage conservation and finance a plan to curb global warming--may have more voter support than many suspect.

Republican McCain proposed the gas-tax break first on April 15, and then Democrat Clinton offered a variation in which the $8 billion in lost revenue would be covered by a temporary surcharge on oil-company profits. Economists say that suspending the tax would boost demand for gasoline just as supplies tighten during the summer driving season, thus wiping out most of the savings for consumers and handing more profits to oil companies. They further criticize McCain's approach because it would effectively borrow money to finance the tax cut, and Clinton's alternative because in their view the profits tax would simply be passed along to consumers.

If nothing else, McCain and Clinton showed that they can unify the Left and the Right in the world of economists. Dyed-in-the-wool Republican economists (Greg Mankiw and Roger Schmalensee) joined committed Democrats (Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman) and even supporters of the candidates, such as Clinton backer Alice Rivlin (who says that her presidential choice is making a big mistake), in opposing the suspension. The latest sign of unity was a letter from a bipartisan group of more than 230 economists, including four Nobel laureates, objecting to the move.

"This is as close to unanimous as you get" among economists, said Burman, now a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. By his estimate, a purported tax break to average motorists of perhaps $30 this summer would actually amount to a savings of only "a few dollars," with the balance pocketed by oil companies.

In a presidential campaign that has been dominated by personalities more than policy, this backlash on the gas-tax holiday marks one of the few times that the economic impact of a campaign promise has been at the center of the public's reaction, according to William Gale, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. As the three major candidates proposed tax cuts and major spending increases that were not paid for, or targeted benefits to key constituencies such as farmers and the elderly, the policies were often mere props for jousting between politicians. This time around, Gale said, the economic merits were on the table.

Even more remarkable, there are signs that the economists are swaying Americans. Exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina indicate that Clinton was hurt and Obama helped by their stances on the gas tax. Despite widespread dismay about gas prices, a plurality of voters nationwide oppose the gas-tax holiday--49 percent to 45 percent--according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. That same poll asked, "Why do some candidates want to lift the gas tax?" Twenty-one percent said that it was "to help average Americans," but 70 percent responded that it was "to help themselves politically."

For decades, and especially under President Bush, the conventional wisdom has been that Americans would always rally behind a tax cut--even one that increases the budget deficit. For even longer, the assumption has been that Americans love our low taxes on energy--among the lowest in the world--despite repeated assertions by economists that higher taxes would encourage more conservation and fund the kind of alternative energy that the country needs.

This political calculation seemed evident when ABC News This Week host George Stephanopoulos--a former aide to Clinton's husband--asked her on May 4 to defend her gas-tax policy. Clinton not only rejected economic analysis of her approach, she also rejected economics.

Stephanopoulos: "Can you name one economist, a credible economist, who supports the suspension?"

Clinton: "Well, you know, George, I think we've been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion, basically, behind policies that haven't worked well for the middle class and hardworking Americans."

McCain, who has spent less time defending his gas-tax plan, similarly sees economists as biased and selfish. "I find people who are the wealthiest who are most dismissive of a plan to give low-income Americans a little holiday," he said on May 5 in Phoenix. "Thirty dollars means nothing to a lot of economists--I understand that. It means a lot to some low-income Americans."

Gene Sperling, who served as President Clinton's chief economic policy adviser and now does the same for Hillary Clinton, seemed at a loss to justify the gas-tax holiday on CNN last week. He stepped lightly over the question of whether the tax break would help consumers and, like Clinton, appeared to concede that it was more important as a gesture to low- and middle-class Americans: "The economic rationale is simply that we have very rarely ever been in a time like this, where you almost have a bit of a mini-stagflation going on. You have got an economy that is almost in recession. You have people paying twice as much for eggs as they used to.... It is just a little bit of relief for the people that are struggling and the truckers that are struggling day by day right now."

Neither the American Trucking Associations nor the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has called for a cut in the 24.4-cent-per-gallon federal tax on diesel, although some truckers descended on Washington on April 28 to protest the high cost of fuel.

After years in which Democrats challenged the economic rationale of Bush's popular income-tax cuts, Democratic voters may be more skeptical of this tax cut as well.

McCain's chief economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, has said little about his candidate's gas-tax proposal since it was unveiled. One difficulty he faces is that he publicly endorsed the idea of raising energy taxes a year and a half ago as a member of a Council on Foreign Relations task force. Times have changed: Holtz-Eakin has argued that high prices now provide enough incentive for oil producers to increase production, but his 2006 rationale, in interviews at the time, closely matches the mainstream economic argument against suspending the gas tax temporarily.

Reached by e-mail, Holtz-Eakin sent a brief memo offering one professional argument that he says supports the gas-tax proposal--a recently published study of a similar suspension of state gas taxes in Indiana. In that example, the economists found that from half to three-quarters of the tax break was passed along to consumers in the form of lower prices. One of the study's authors, Joseph Doyle, said he hasn't looked at the federal tax question closely but estimates that perhaps half of the temporary tax cut would end up in the pockets of consumers.

However, Doyle said he opposes suspending the federal gas tax, citing both efficiency and fairness. Even if it were 50 percent efficient, he said, the tax holiday would not be very effective--gasoline producers and distributors would end up with too much of the benefit. In addition, the loss of tax revenue under McCain's approach would be borne by all taxpayers, whether they drive or not. Likewise, he said that consumers would end up paying for Clinton's idea of an offsetting oil-profits tax.

Looming behind the economists' argument on gas taxes is their common view that dealing with global warming will require much higher energy taxes to encourage conservation. Burman isn't sure that Americans will be so eager to embrace this argument, but he's encouraged. "They seemed to be listening to us this time."