Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 30, 2010

Clean-up efforts of the disastrous oil mess in Louisiana continue as Pres. Obama vacations in Chicago - May 2010

Veteran political journalist, speech writer, and author Peggy Noonan consistently hits the nail on the head in the Wall Street Journal essay below. She analyzes and critiques Pres. Obama’s lackluster, detached incompetence in dealing effectively, quickly with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that is destroying the fragile Louisiana coastline.

In the midst of this oil spill crisis, Obama has never really shouldered responsibility, has finger-pointed blame at British Petroleum ad nauseum. A true leader leads, a true leader takes ownership, a true leader gets into the thick of it rather than hurriedly scooting off to the side, focusing on small, trivial details, not grasping the big picture. A true leader does not deflect blame to others.

A true leader, in the midst of an environmental crisis of this magnitude, is never “off the clock,” would not go on vacation. But Obama intends to return from his Chicago vacation in time for the Paul McCartney concert, by golly.

A true leader has the nation he was elected to serve as his top priority, above all else. Above frivolous photo ops with sports figures, above NBA interviews, above attending concerts, above shooting hoops, above golfing.

It’s all about priorities. And it’s about the resulting perceptions when those priorities are scrutinized.

Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal: He Was Suppose to Be Competent:

I don’t see how the president’s position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president’s political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don’t see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They’re in one reality, he’s in another.

The American people have spent at least two years worrying that high government spending would, in the end, undo the republic. They saw the dollars gushing night and day, and worried that while everything looked the same on the surface, our position was eroding. They have worried about a border that is in some places functionally and of course illegally open, that it too is gushing night and day with problems that states, cities and towns there cannot solve.

And now we have a videotape metaphor for all the public’s fears: that clip we see every day, on every news show, of the well gushing black oil into the Gulf of Mexico and toward our shore. You actually don’t get deadlier as a metaphor for the moment than that, the monster that lives deep beneath the sea.

In his news conference Thursday, President Obama made his position no better. He attempted to act out passionate engagement through the use of heightened language—”catastrophe,” etc.—but repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae. His staff probably thought this demonstrated his command of even the most obscure facts. Instead it made him seem like someone who won’t see the big picture. The unspoken mantra in his head must have been, “I will not be defensive, I will not give them a resentful soundbite.” But his strategic problem was that he’d already lost the battle. If the well was plugged tomorrow, the damage will already have been done.

The original sin in my view is that as soon as the oil rig accident happened the president tried to maintain distance between the gusher and his presidency. He wanted people to associate the disaster with BP and not him. When your most creative thoughts in the middle of a disaster revolve around protecting your position, you are summoning trouble. When you try to dodge ownership of a problem, when you try to hide from responsibility, life will give you ownership and responsibility the hard way. In any case, the strategy was always a little mad. Americans would never think an international petroleum company based in London would worry as much about American shores and wildlife as, say, Americans would. They were never going to blame only BP, or trust it.

I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: “Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust.” Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet the need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: “We pay so much for the government and it can’t cap an undersea oil well!”

This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn’t like about the Bush administration, everything it didn’t like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. Conservatives got this point—they know it without being told—but liberals and progressives did not. They thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bush’s incompetence and conservatives’ failure to “believe in government.” But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent.

Remarkable too is the way both BP and the government, 40 days in, continue to act shocked, shocked that an accident like this could have happened. If you’re drilling for oil in the deep sea, of course something terrible can happen, so you have a plan on what to do when it does.

How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc, so inadequate, so embarrassing? We’re plugging it now with tires, mud and golf balls?

What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obama’s standing with Democrats. They don’t love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton, and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have. They are invested in him. In time—after the 2010 elections go badly—they are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville, the most vocal and influential of the president’s Gulf critics, signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations.

Related:
The New Ledger, Big Government: White House Failure: On Markets, Corruption, and the Oil Spill
ABC World News: BP Oil Spill: Gov. Jindal Asks for Permission to Build Barrier Islands
Gateway Pundit: Louisiana Official to Obama: Your Oil Drilling Suspension “Will Kill Us” and Obama to Hold a Few More Photo Ops Before Addressing Gulf Oil Spill Disaster and Louisiana Rep. Scalise Screams at Obama: “We’re Tired of the Excuses” (Video) and Shameless… Obama Takes Swipe At Sarah Palin During Oil Spill Disaster Press Conference (Video) and Coast Guard Says BP Plugged Oil Leak in Gulf and and Sarah Palin Slams Obama For Lax Response to Gulf Oil Spill Crisis and Jindal Furious: Rips Obama For Dismal Response to Oil Spill Disaster and Dem Congress Jumps Into Action… Will Quadruple Gas Tax After Gulf Oil Spill and Gross. Naked Code Pink Wackjobs Slathered In Crude Oil Protest at BP Headquarters (Video) and Kirsten Powers: Obama Administration’s Response to Gulf Oil Spill “Is Not About Campaign Donations, It’s About Incompetence” (Video) and Thick Blobs of Tar Begin Washing Up on Alabama Shore – Obama Goes Golfing and Scientists Find Giant Plumes of Oil Under Gulf… Obama Shoots Hoops and Leaked Report From April 28 Shows US Government Believed Gulf Spill Could Become “Unchecked Gusher” and It Begins… GOP Reps Call for Investigation into Obama Administration’s Slow and Weak Response to BP Gulf Oil Spill
Motor City Times: Obama Decides To Unilaterally Stop Drilling For Oil
Tom Russo, Big Government: Louisiana Coast — Last Line of Defense?
Nice Deb: Introducing: Barack Obama’s Oil Spill’s Blog
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Gulf Oil Leak Plug Failure — “Top Kill” Didn’t Work, Obama Likely Won’t Accept Blame Even Though BP Is Operating Under His Authority, Rep. Scalise Hits the Roof (video) and Louisiana Coast Oil Spill Photo Op… What in the Heck Is Obama Doing in This Photo? and Gulf Oil Spill Roundup: Obama’s Press Conference, Diving into the Gulf Oil Spill to See the Disaster, & Obama’s Head of Mineral Management Service Resigns in Wake of BP Spill (video) and Do or Die on the Gulf: Carville’s Oil Rant Against Obama, Dowd on Illegal Immigration (video) and Priorities: Oil Spill Help or More AZ Bashing? Obama Thrilled with Phoenix Suns Pro-Illegal Alien “Los Suns” Jerseys in NBA Interview, Drags Feet Responding to Jindal’s Pleas for Help with Louisiana Oil Spill Crisis and Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal Fed Up, Won’t Continue to Wait for Team Obama’s Help with Oil Disaster — Won’t Wait for Permission, Will Start Building Sand Booms to Save Coast and The Gulf & Golf: Oil Continues to Gush & Contaminate Louisiana Coastline, Bureaucrat Commission Named in Lieu of Actually Getting Involved, & Obama Golfs… Again (video)
Quin Hillyer, American Spectator: What the Oil Spill Means
Speak Truth 2 Power: Oil Gusher Plug and Play
Michelle Malkin: No wonder finger-pointing Obama wants oil spill finger-pointing to stop

Categories: Business & Economy, Environment and Earth, Government, Social and Political Climate
Tags: Barack Obama, Barack Obama lazy, BP oil spill, British Petroleum, Coast Guard, Congress, Democrat, Democrats, ecology, environment, Gulf Coast, Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Gulf oil spill, Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana, Louisiana oil spill, NBA, Obama, Obama lazy, oil spill, oil spill disaster, Peggy Noonan, Pres. Obama, press conference, state of emergency, US Gulf Coast, wetlands, White House