I’ve been thinking about the President’s Oval Office speech last week, and about his response to the BP disaster more generally. I saw Gov. Palin take him apart:
That wasn’t surprising, of course, but watching Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews hit him even harder definitely was. Even harder on the President—no real surprise, since he’s less of a partisan than the MSDNC guys—was Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times in his “Top of the Ticket” blog:
The first two-thirds of the president’s remarks read just fine . . .
But watching the president and hearing him was a little creepy; that early portion of the address was robotic, lacked real energy, enthusiasm. And worst of all specifics. He was virtually detail-less. . . .
Trust me, the president said, tomorrow I’m going to give those BP execs what-for. As CBS’ Mark Knoller noted on his Twitter account, the president has allotted exactly 20 whole minutes this morning—1,200 fleeting seconds—to his first-ever conversation with the corporation responsible for the disaster.
Then, he’s got an important lunch with Joe “I Witnessed the World Cup’s First Tie” Biden. . . .
President Obama has said he doesn’t sense an appetite to address something as large as the illegal immigrant issue this year. But suddenly—watch the left hand over here because he wants you to not focus on how long it’s taken him to take charge of the spill—he thinks there’s a compelling need to spend a motorcade full of moola that the federal government doesn’t have in order to change the country’s energy habits.
And we’ve gotta start that right now because of an underwater leaking pipe 40 miles off Louisiana that we haven’t plugged and don’t really understand how it broke in the first place. So let’s do the electric car thing and build more windmills now.
And if, by chance, the nation’s politicians end up fighting over an energy plan during the next five months until the voting, maybe the politically damaging healthcare regrets and hidden costs will drown in all the words like so many thousands of seabirds in all the gulf’s still-surging oil.
Of course, no one reasonable expects the President to know how to fix the blowout. Gov. Palin isn’t criticizing him for that, because she doesn’t know how to fix it either. The problem is, we’ve gotten ourselves into a situation that nobody knows how to fix. Which means, you have to mitigate the problem, and it’s there that people do have ideas and that executive leadership is needed from the White House to enable the people who have the ideas and the equipment and the experience to go to work to fix what can be fixed—and it’s there that Barack Obama and his administration are not only falling down on the job, but in fact are being actively counterproductive; significant, experienced help was offered—and rejected.
I realize that most Americans don’t take the Dutch all that seriously (those of us who grew up around their American descendants don’t make that mistake, however), but as James Joyner pointed out,
As to the fact that the Netherlands government has a plan for this and we don’t, I’m not terribly surprised. It’s a small, maritime and riverine country surrounded with oil drilling.
What’s more, the offer came through official channels, via the Netherlands’ consul general in Houston, which means it should have been treated far more seriously and respectfully, and not just for environmental reasons:
You’d sure think taking advantage of an ally’s offer of assistance would have made sense, not only in terms of the spill itself but for building better relations with Europe. Given the scale of our economies, it’s rare that the Netherlands can bail us out. Why not let them when the opportunity arises?
Why not let them? Well, if you’re thinking like a Chicago Democrat, it makes perfect sense:
What about the decision not to waive the Jones Act, which bars foreign-flag vessels from coming to the aid of the Gulf cleanup? The Bush administration promptly waived it after Katrina in 2005. The Obama administration hasn’t and claims unconvincingly that, gee, there aren’t really any foreign vessels that could help.
The more plausible explanation is that this is a sop to the maritime unions, part of the union movement that gave Obama and other Democrats $400 million in the 2008 campaign cycle. It’s the Chicago way: Dance with the girl that brung ya.
What’s more important than getting the mess cleaned up? Making sure that if there’s any spending to be done, it’s your supporters who get the money. And, of course, making sure that whatever else happens, all federal laws and regulations are strictly enforced—don’t want to set any precedents for deregulation, now, do we?
Or the decision to deny Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal to deploy barges to skim oil from the Gulf’s surface. Can’t do that until we see if they’ve got enough life preservers and fire equipment. That inspired blogger Rand Simberg to write a blog post he dated June 1, 1940: “The evacuation of British and French troops from the besieged French city of Dunkirk was halted today, over concerns that many of the private vessels that had been deployed for the task were unsafe for troop transport.”
Taken all in all, it’s no wonder that the best thing the President can find to do about this disaster is . . . blame Congress. To be sure, he was trying to blame just Republicans; but you might have thought he would have realized a) that all such comments would do is make voters more hostile to Congress in general, and thus more likely to vote against their current federal representatives, and b) that his own party currently controls Congress, and thus would be more likely to be hurt by the effects of his comments.
Were I a Democrat, I don’t think I’d be at all pleased with the way the President has shown in this situation. Since I’m not, I’ll just say that more and more, he’s reminding me of this guy: