Because of the fact that most criticism of this nature tends to be cheap political grandstanding, we are no more apt to blame the Katrina aftermath on Bush than we are to blame Obama for the Gulf/BP oil spill response.
Karl Rove, writing for the Wall St. Journal believes otherwise. He raises some very good points with respect to state and local vs. federal jurisdiction. However, we still can't shake the overarching notion that what this all speaks to is the cumbersome and unwieldy nature of federal government, it's agencies and bureaucracies rather than who is in the Oval Office at the time.
So, in a sense, Rove is right: This oil spill is Obama's Katrina and he will have to face the music for some suspect PR and visuals rather than anything substantive his administration did or did not do.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Blame game
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6 comments:
In 1994 the Feds came up with a plan to deal with such a disaster and yet, when it happened, they did not have any of the boats they said they needed to capture the oil and set it on fire.
Here is James Carville on the subject. Man I love it when the lizard gets a case of the ass!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtvoLrQBxis
A link is on the way. You and I had the same initial response. I think it's telling that two fairly hard right bloggers have wanted to give the President the benefit of the doubt for a long time, but are tumbling to the same conclusions on this. The more I read about it and the more I think about it, the worse it looks for Obama.
Katrina was about 3-5 days of bungling. This is about 40. There's a world of difference between 3 days and 40 in terms of what a competent leader does in response to a crisis.
I will not doubt mistakes were made and I will give only a half-assed defense of the administration for the fact that they made political hay of Katrina during the campaign.
Let the political chips fall where they may.
Are they allowing this to happen so they can wag their finger and say, 'I told you so?"
Obama taking responsiblity for the oil spill is just plain political grand standing. He says he is responsible and then points the accusatory finger at BP! Responsbility lies with the lack of precautionary and regulatory oversight on the parts of the Administration, past and current, and with BP. Compliance and inspection could have prevented this spill had not BP paid off big Gov to not insure BP was in compliance. Blame at this point is moot. Actions are what is needed and the only action I see is from BP. The current administration is too busy readying the next teleprompter speech to really see what it must do to take corrective actions and prevent Louisiana from becoming a ghost town due to lost fishing and tourist industries.
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