Ah, the art of political spin, half-truths and word craft. The fact is that President Obama issued a six-month moratorium on new permits for deepwater drilling but production continues full steam ahead from existing deepwater wells in the same Gulf of Mexico region all carrying the same potential for disaster as BP. The conclusion to be drawn here is that President Obama does not want to anger the powerful oil industry whose financial contributions to the Democratic - and Republican Parties are very sizeable and there are November mid-term elections coming up, right?
My biggest disappointment in the entire speech was when the president spoke about setting up some mechanism to handle financial compensation from BP that is going to be independent of his Administration. It's the kind of set-up that politicians do when they are clueless about a situation but have to appear to the public as "doing something." If this commission, task force, body or whatever you call it does not have real subpoena and other powers then it's a joke. BP has absolutely no reason to cooperate or respect a toothless organization set up by the president just because it was set up by him. Matter of fact, to date BP has routinely twisted the facts, lied to the president and his Administration, and acted as the big bad wolf in its dithering clean-up activities.
The Presidential speech from the Oval Office conjured up the image of Obama as a war president. I'm sure that that's all well and good. But his speech was not remotely combative even if there were some moments of tough talk. It was essentially a speech long on carefully designed catch phrases and words primarily used with the next day's headlines in mind and TV pundits' talking points. That's message delivery craft not solution driven, hard-nosed decision-making and informed, bold leadership. That too disappointed me.
Finally, after over 50 days of badgering BP, walking the beaches on photo operational presidential inspection tours President Obama sat down for a face to face meeting with the bosses of BP. What the heck too him so long? If as he said this spill is akin to September 11, 2001 then where was his sense of urgency to have it cleaned up and demands for an explanation from those responsible? Hell, if his response to date is anything like the Bush Administration's response to 9-11 then the Gulf States are going to be in terrible shape for a very, very long time.
In the end corporate greed, governmental corruption, and big money were responsible for this environmental and economic disaster. President Obama and his team committed the first mistake by consistently insisting that BP was in charge of cleaning up the spill. No, from day one even though he was engaged - the president should have appointed someone to take charge of the entire fiasco not put some semi-retired admiral to coordinate the disaster efforts. In this scenario it was like having the BP fox guard the hen-house.
But I am an eternal optimist and I still have faith in this president. I believe that despite being torn between his friendship with corporate America and the people who elected him to office he will eventually do the right thing. His political savviness and sense of decency simply does not allow him to do otherwise.
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