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The cause of the explosion of SUVs was two-fold, a Congress (a Democrat controlled Congress at that time) decided in the late 80s that CAFE standards would not apply to the US truck fleet. And at about the same time, Saudi Arabia got into an oil price war with Russia, driving oil prices into the ground. These two factors took a few years to play out but by 1990 the trend was starting towards trucks and SUVs.
Meanwhile, from 1990 to 2000 we saw oil consumption grow to almost 20 million barrels per day. Who was president during that time? It was Clinton, and I don't blame him either. He inherited a bad decision from a prior Congress and cheap oil so he tackled problems he could, like the deficit, instead of problems that would have been stonewalled, like diminsihing resource issues.
Presidents are not omnipotent philosopher-kings able to make everything right with Solomon-like wisdom in a few short sentences. Given the economy under Reagan and under Clinton, any attempt by either to do more than occurred regarding oil usage would have been met with massive political resistance from the other party.
And if you don't believe that, check Harry Reid's own website where he's launched his presidential bid. Harry is not talking about conservation. No sir! Democrat Harry Reid is talking about taxing those evil oil companies til they lower gasoline prices again.
Politicians of both parties are mostly opportunists. True visionary statesmen are rare and often rejected anyway. Look at Roscoe Bartlett's example now. A Republican, a conservative Republican no less, and he's the only member of Congress talking about Peak Oil.
Stop blaming politicians and begin to realize that the core problem is the people themselves, all of them, voters and non-voters alike and their unrealistic expectations.
What happened is that we elected R.R. who:
a) Discouraged all energy efficiency measures initiated by the previous administration
b) negotiated with the Saudis the oil price drop to topple the U.S.S.R economy (you can read the Peter Schweizer's "Victory" on this) and
c) caused an artificial recession and distorted public finance at home by applying a mad anti-inflationary monetary policy.
The last one had the side effect of keeping the US oil consuption low during the 80-s in spite of the lower prices. I'm just saying that this was the moment that we had the best opportunity for a breakthrough in our oil addiction which of course was wasted. So... if I make a little harsh analogy: is it the fault of the cruminal or the society that brought up the criminal? For me the correct answer is: both. But the responsability is for the criminal because he is the one that did what he did.