I don’t like the guy much, and any criticism he gets tends to tickle me after all the Messiah stuff, but when I see Drudge et al. gleefully trumpeting these stories:
I’m left a combination of unmoved and annoyed. I didn’t particularly agree with bashing Bush for not preventing hurricanes or keeping people from living below sea level or managing a corrupt city’s emergency response system, because I don’t particularly see that as the federal government’s business (or its area of competence).
I’m kind of like the same here. Exactly what is Obama/“the federal government” supposed to be doing that they’re not? The suggestion can’t be (can it?) that they should be capping the well. Is anyone really saying that (inept as BP might be) anyone other than BP can get the technical job at the wellhead done faster or better? Is it . . . the feds should be soaking the oil up from the entire ocean? What could they be doing, that’s within their constitutionally enumerated powers (as though anyone cares about that anymore, but . . . .)?
And are conservatives being hypocritical for buying into or purporting to buy into “the feds need to Do Something” and “government’s-role-is-to-fix-everything” bleats that we decry when we hear them from the Left?
I think the least-nuts criticism stems from a sense that a more energetic and effective Minerals Management Service might have been able to insist on better safety measures on the Deepwater Horizon, thus preventing this mess. That’s a fair point, but the problem - as with so many other gripes people have with Obama - is that fixing a dysfunctional agency takes time, and Obama just hasn’t had that long in office yet.
There’s also the fact that Obama has voiced support for offshore oil drilling - but I don’t think that one horribly mis-managed oil platform discredits that practice any more than the horribly mis-managed Chernobyl plant discredits nuclear power.
My feeling is that they (the Conservatives who demand that Obama DO SOMETHING, or the ones who somehow blame Obama for it happening in the first place) are really just trying to get even for the blame heaped upon Bush for his failure with Katrina. For further evidence of this, look at how any current-day terrorist attack is trumpeted as somehow being worse than the attack on 9/11.
It’s just partisan sniping, and particularly transparently so.
At the end of last week, I heard several co-workers through my closed door bitterly criticizing Obama for “cavorting around with Paul McCartney” rather than “doing something” about the oil spill.
The question I wanted to ask (though as a minority of one here, I know better than to actually do so) was, “OK, Obama cancels his appearance at the White House event, and instead spends the three hours it took…doing what? Doing what that would have the slightest impact on making the situation better than it was three hours previous?”
I don’t know - I don’t really know what’s involved in coordinating these efforts. I’ve never tried to move large groups of people and equipment across the country to manage a once-in-a-generation disaster.
Do I blame him for making numerous, really loud and sel-important statements about how awesome he is and how great his solution is going to be and blah blah blah won’t rest blah blah blah boot to the neck?
Yes. He’s a whiny, pretentious loser I wouldn’t trust to run a Dairy Queen. he does not, and perhaps cannot, lead. But I wouldn’t care that much if he’d just shut up about himself already.
To hear Bobby Jindal tell it, yeah, I guess so but given that no one’s ever really effectively stopped spilled oil from making it onshore, and given the length of the coastline (how long would it be if you count every bayou and inlet) I’m not sure anticontamination as a broad matter was ever on the cards. And the federal government doesn’t have at-large resources (as in people, trucks, clean up booms) for labor-intensive, manpower-intensive, physical work. You could divert the military, but there are obvious downsides to that, especially now. I guess you could send in the Guard. But do they know enough to do environmental containment? Unclear. Beyond the military – how does the “fedearl response” look? You’re not going to send DOT or Environment desk jockeys out in mail trucks to rig booms.
I don’t blame him. I am tired of hearing him talk in nice calm tones about how enraged he is, while I hear of people sending in tons of ideas while none of them seem to be tried. I do put more blame on the BP execs, but even then, it’s not like they deliberately did this either, tho they should have had better emergency plans in case something like this did happen.
Largely this. To some extent, a lot of people think Bush got more blame than he deserved for Katrina, and so I imagine it’s largely their turn to look at Obama and say, well, if Bush was criticized for Katrina, you should be held up to the same standard. Moreover, it’s confirmation bias; if you already don’t like the guy, it’s easy to look at him doing other things seeing it as him ignoring the issue.
Personally, I think both are criticized too harshly for what they could have done to prevent the disasters. Either way, there really isn’t a whole lot the government can or do that it isn’t already doing. Moreso, the President can’t just focus on the single most pressing issue, he does have other duties.
If Obama stepped in and did something, we’d be hearing all about how Obama stomped all over corp rights, and how much he hated big oil, and how it was all his fault.
Since he didn’t, we’re hearing all about how he’s weak, and ineffective, and hates big oil, and how it’s all his fault.
It doesn’t matter what he does, the repub’s talking heads will scream and cry about it.
Just wondering if there are many conservative politicians saying that - ie: there should have been more regulations and oversight by the government. That would be… an interesting position for them to take.
Again, I would rather enjoy seeing folks from the GOP slinging that barb at Obama. I seem to recall some Republican candidates talking about drilling a lot - now who was that?
I actually had this conversation with a coworker who was complaining that Obama should send in the Navy or Coast Guard to fix the problem. I looked at him and said “and do what? What would a military organization be able to do to stop an undersea oil leak that an undersea oil drilling company can’t do?” The only response was that the Federal Government should be doing ‘something’, but could not name one specific thing the could do that BP was not already doing.
This was the same guy who has being bleating his little tea party screeds about how ‘Big Government can’t be trusted to solve problems and that we should depend on Private Industry to take care of itself’ for the last 18 months.
The problem isn’t just about stopping the leak. Obviously BP should be doing that themselves, and it appears they are.
But there’s also the problem of minimizing damage from the oil that’s already out there. Organizing that effort is quite properly a governmental responsibility.
It is their job to criticize Obama for whatever he does, for whatever he does not do, and for whatever he might think of doing or not doing. It’s also their job to try to get this criticism into any media outlet that will hear them. It’s what they are paid to do.
