Personal column by John Howell

Though President Bush has been to Saudi Arabia twice in recent months to hold hands with Saudi Finance Minister Saud al-Faisal while he begs for more oil, he found no sympathy.

That’s about the extent of this administration’s accomplishments in providing relief for American consumers suffering from high fuel prices.

Time to reconsider the 55 miles per hour speed limit.

That done, maybe it’s time to consider enforcing existing speed limits. Over the years drivers have become accustomed to regarding the posted speed limit as suggested minimum instead legal maximum.

But maybe that’s changing. While logging the my many miles on I-55 between here and New Orleans, I have usually let my no-cruise-control minivan drift around 80 mph. Maybe a little more but no so much that it would alarm the local constabulary should he or she be radaring but not much less lest I be rearended.

Even at that speed, I not only have been passed often but often passed by vehicles traveling with enough speed to create a brief vacuum between us. They’ve nearly sucked my doors off.

But I left for the Memorial Day determined to hold strictly to 70 mph the whole route. All the way to New Orleans and back, I watched the speedometer closely. Of course it would occasionally drift to 75 and I’d back off.

What surprised me was that others apparently had the same idea. Either drivers slowed down because of the threat of increased law enforcement or they were saving gas. Or both.

I was passed from time to time but on very few occasions were my doors sucked into that vacuum.

My very unscientific calculations (my van not only lacks a cruise control, it requires old-fashioned calculations of miles traveled divided by gallons consumed to determine mileage) indicated that I went from my usual 21 miles per gallon to 23 m.p.g.

Which leads me to believe that if we seriously returned to the national speed limit of 55 miles per hour, they would choke in their own oil while wringing their own hands.

What a way to fight a war! And without financing both sides!