Am I The Only One Who Doesn't Particularly Blame Obama Re BP?

I’m not seeing it. There’s a difference between a safety regulation and not drilling. It’s insanely stupid not to drill in ANWAR after we built a pipeline specifically to tap into the North Alaska oil field. The area in question is a very small part of the greater park land and there is an established history of successful drilling in the area.

Let me add an example of what I see as your position: Oil company complains jobs/money lost because they are delayed by regulations. Regulations turn out to be a safety valve that stops millions of gallons from escaping. Oil company receives the negative publicity.

The only criticism that can be reasonably leveled at Obama over the BP flap was the fact that A) I believe he’s been the largest recipient of campaign donations from BP, and B) his regulators gave BP a pass on safety inspections.

Once the explosion actually happened, there’s very little a President can do, and I’m glad Obama hasn’t tried to micro-manage it.

That said, Bush took way too much blame for Katrina, and Obama heartily piled on him over that. So now he gets to find out what it means when ‘the buck stops here’ - you get credit for things you didn’t do, and blame for things you’re not responsible for. That’s one of the burdens of being President.

I agree with all of what Sam said except not knowing enough about donations from BP to know one way or another.

You can make the argument that Obama could have prevented this by better management (although I still contend that it would be nearly politically impossible,) but presently I simply don’t see what he can do except maybe create a brain trust to come up with scientific solutions but on short notice that doesn’t happen except in the movies.

On the other hand, Bush did deserve more blame for Katrina than Obama did for this, since he had ample time to solve ongoing known problems and appointed bad people to the posts of overseeing them and then stuck beside them when it was clear they weren’t doing so well. On the other hand, it’s not like everyone in congress was begging him to fix the New Orleans levees and he refused: there’s a chance any President would have performed similarly (albeit, less of a chance, since Bush was incompetent.)

Exactly, we’re already seeing as much from Lisa Murkowski’s efforts at insulating the industry and from the vacuous comments of Sarah Palin.

I don’t know about the BP donations, but that’s how I see it for the most part, with one addendum: IIRC, the regulators “gave BP a pass” based on a report prepared before he took office (that is, from Bush’s MMS). That doesn’t absolve Obama’s MMS, but does reduce some of the direct blame.

I’m not particularly fond of Obama’s administration so far. It’s greatest virtue seems to be that it is not headed by the kind of dippy hot-head that headed the last administration. The policies seem to be the same except on the health care package, which is national Romney Care.

The only thing he has done so far with respect to the oil spill is talk about removing liability caps. That is the most tepid response short of doing nothing imaginable.

But that doesn’t make it the Administration’s fault. They are political bureaucrats and politicians. How they are supposed to gather the necessary equipment and engineers and personnel after the last administration disbanded all such efforts is beyond me. BP or Exxon or Shell and their vendors are the only people in the world who can handle this sort of thing, and they are there.

It doesn’t seem comparable to Bush screwing up Katina. Bush didn’t personally make the levies and storm walls run down, but he did continue a philosophy of believe the government couldn’t and shouldn’t prepare for disasters and relief. He put a fellow with horse racing experience and a law license in charge of FEMA. How was that going to work out well? When people were cut off and flooding and homeless he didn’t make an appearance and send help, he stayed on vacation and played his guitar and said nothing. Thousands of people died.

The two are just not comparable.

Now Katina and 9/11 are similar. Twice the Bush administration responded to a disaster by saying who could have foreseen such and such, when in fact there are a number of government agencies set up to foresee and plan for both of those such and suches.

“Running his yap” is solely opinion, but in what way has he interfered with BP’s containment efforts? :dubious:

I haven’t seen any interference with BP’s efforts at all. One could make the argument that he may have interfered with Jindal’s scheme to build a barrier sandbar, but even I could tell when I first heard about it that a seawall could cause more problems than it solves, you don’t need to be a hydrological expert to realize that it’s not as simple as just keeping the oil out.

I’ve criticised Obama a lot, basically accused him of being Bush Lite, which he is. But there’s nothing he could have done with the oil spill that he hasn’t done or nothing that he could have done better. Whatever he does he’s going to get criticism. If he goes down to the Gulf, bursts into tears and personally drags a couple of birds out of the gunk and starts cleaning them up he’s going to get slaughtered for a Clinton-style feel-your-pain response. If he backs off and does what he’s doing he gets slaughtered. There’s no good option for Obama over this one, it’s just a case of picking the least-worst option.

Where I will start criticising him is if he doesn’t make BP pay every penny of the costs of this. He can do it easily and there’s no excuse if he doesn’t.

I think you could make the case that Rand Paul comes as close as anyone to being on BP’s side.

I don’t see how one could blame Obama for this. Bush/Cheney and their Republican cohorts stripped as many regulations as they could and then stuffed the regulatory agencies with shills for the oil companies. I think the federal response could have been better, but then again what is the point of starting the cleanup while the spill is still ongoing? If I blame Obama for anything, it’s for believing a word out of the mouth of BP.

First let me start with those who blame Obama should put a sock in it. But lets not make excuses for him and the standard it is not his fault because he has not been office that long is as bad as blaming him. There is nothing to blame it happened.

I have been against any coast oil drilling since the 60’s. I remember all the blow outs that happened off the California coast most if not all caused by oil companies doing the work on the cheap. I do not trust the oil companies.

Oh, agreed. These aren’t really conservative criticisms - but they’re ones I’ve heard from Democrats, and I think they come closest to validity. I still don’t find them particularly compelling, though.

What regulation was stripped that would have prevented this? BP ignored safety problems with the equipment and rushed the plugging process.

BP's Dismal Safety Record - ABC News BP dominates the oil companies in safety and environmental violations. Seems pretty clear that they see it as the cost of doing business. They have had MMS in their pocket for a long time.
Regan was the first to get the ball rolling when he said "it is time for regulation to get their feet off the necks of big business’. It played well with those who love unbridled capitalism. It was an opening salvo against rules and regulations that protect consumers and the environment. It has been a long battle but in America ,money wins. The BP mess is just the fruits of their labors and lobbying.

I know a lot of people are sending in ‘tons of ideas’, but that doesn’t really mean that it is feasible to try those. Bill Nye triedto diplomatically explain to a lot of helpful people why their ideas won’t work.

In a natural disaster response, the experience and expertise is the responsibility of the government and as such, Bush failed miserably.

In the oil spill case the responsibility lies with BP as they must fix their own screw ups and be prepared to deal with plausible disasters let alone prevent them.

Why anyone can expect the government to be prepared to do a top notch job of stopping the leak and jumping on the clean up is beyond me.

But when I read of Republicans complaining about Obama’s response, I’m reminded of the UHC debate several months ago where their mantra was that private enterprise was better than government at getting things done.

If they want to make the government ultimately responsible, then they’ll have to expand the oversight role and regulations that will give the government the same kind of control and expertise that they have in mining disasters.

I saw on late night TV ,that Obama is pushing through a program that will renew the wetlands and barrier islands near the Mississippi river as it empties into the gulf. It would be funded by Halliburton, BP and Transocean. I do not know if it is true but it would please the gulf residents and provide a buffer from hurricanes.

I’d like to see foreign help in the form of skimmers. That’s something the President could facilitate. Surely there is more equipment out their to use.

Sure a couple skimmers from Europe would fix it all. It is only a huge gulf and 3 states shorelines to clean up.

Duh, he’s a politician, they’re all self-important asses.

Of course, this means that no one in the office would be any different, so it’s sort of futile to whinge.