By Brigitte L. Nacos
When it comes to responding to the catastrophic oil spill in
the Gulf of Mexico, there is much blame to go
around. While BP was and remains the villain-in-chief, the president’s handling
of this crisis has not been impressive either. It might well be that behind the
scenes the White House was engaged from the outset, but in the face of an
unprecedented ecological disaster the president himself should have addressed
the nation early on and shown his hands-on role in managing the crisis. While a
far cry from his predecessor’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the
images of Obama’s holiday activities during the Memorial Day weekend in Chicago were unsettling.
To be sure, a president does not have to be in the Oval Office to communicate
with people anywhere. But perceptions are more important than reality. And
playing in a pick-up basketball game in Chicago
sent the wrong signals in the face of a major disaster.
*
The spill has blurred party ideologies and lines along the
most affected coastal states. Louisiana
is but one example. Not only because of Mary Matelin and James Carville, the
odd political couple’s united front. Take Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican,
and U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat: both demand that the Obama
administration lifts its temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling while they
lament the disastrous effects of the BP spill that has yet to be plugged. It
may well be that deepwater rigs in the Gulf "employ, directly, hundreds of
people and indirectly thousands,” as Landrieu argues. But such harm pales in
comparison to the greatest ecological disaster in America’s history. How in heaven
can a guy like Jindal attack Washington
for not doing enough to clean up the terrible consequences of the spill and in
the same breath join into the drill-baby-drill scream of Big Oil’s beneficiaries of generous
campaign donations in Congress and elsewhere?
Apropos, beneficiaries and defenders of Big Oil. After
Republican U.S. Representative Joe Barton of Texas called the escrow account that BP and
the White House agreed upon a “$20 billion shakedown” in his apology to BP boss
Tony Hayward, he was reprimand by the Republican congressional leadership. But
that was only because Barton’s remarks were prominently reported and
immediately attacked by public officials along the Gulf coast. After all, a
host of other Republicans had expressed very much the same earlier without
triggering any negative reactions in their own camp:
·
The Republican Study Committee (RSC) that has
115 members from the U.S. House of Representatives called the BP escrow fund “emblematic
of a politicization of our economy that has been borne out of this
Administration’s drive for greater power and control. It is the same
mentality that believes an economic crisis or an environmental disaster is the
best opportunity to pursue a failed liberal agenda.”
·
Republican U.S. Representative Michelle Bachmann
of Minnesota,
the darling of the Tea Party wing and prominent member of the RSC, said
that that British Petroleum “shouldn’t have to be fleeced" and called the
escrow fund "a redistribution of wealth fund"—completely ignoring
that the $20 billion are designated for paying cleanup costs and claims.
·
Sarah Palin attacked President Obama for not
meeting with BP chief Tony Hayward earlier and lectured him that “we can’t afford
to demonize” BP…
·
Ex-House speaker Newt Gingrich, a possible
contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 said with respect
to the $20 billion fund that President Obama “"is directly engaged in
extorting money.”
·
And the possibly most influential Republican
voice of all, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners that as law professor, Barack
Obama taught his law students "how to use the Constitution to shake down
corporations through race and grievance lawsuits. That's what he taught
students at the University
of Chicago . . . much
like he is doing to BP."
Ah, well, obviously Republicans want to assure that Big Oil
continues to single them out for the most generous campaign donations.
*
As for President Obama, however disastrous the oil spill in
the Gulf is, it is also a golden opportunity to rally support for a
comprehensive, green energy initiative. In times of normalcy, the American
system lends itself mostly to incremental changes—but in times of crises,
strong leaders can achieve meaningful policy changes.
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