Will Obama Own the Gulf Oil Spill?
It’s a good thing for him, and for Louisiana, that President Obama went there yesterday. Given how the course and severity of the oil slick has grown over the past several days, this is probably the outward bound of time under which he could reasonably have expected not to come.
Still, whatever one’s feelings on any other issue, spare a thought for him and the White House staff on this one. First, give the President credit for not blithely abandoning his support for his offshore drilling plans in the wake of the disaster, as some on the left were urging him to do. If he could only apply that consistency and firmness to, say, Iran...
Second, it’s worth recalling that the focus in the immediate aftermath was, correctly, the search for the missing workers. The company’s estimates of the effects and volume of the spill were comparatively low. In the rush of great waters that accompanies each day at the White House (to which Bush Chief of Staff Andy Card used to refer more prosaically as “drinking from a firehose”), it’s understandable that the initial reaction was muted – on the facts they had, that was probably the right call. There are only 24 hours in a day; it’s easy to imagine a conversation along the lines of “Janet’s working on it; they report it should be contained fairly easily,” not having any information to challenge this estimate and not having any desire to blow the Administration’s response out of proportion. (That sentiment, too – resisting the temptation for a direct comparison with the response to Hurricane Katrina by seeking to appear more magnanimous (or competent) than the previous Administration – is also a hopeful sign pointing to an Administration’s maturity.) On the other hand, perhaps merging the Bush Administration’s Homeland Security Council into the National Security Council wasn’t such a great idea. Jim Jones only has 24 hours in a day, too, and this took away a seat at the table.
And the future? In the week of a U.K. general election, it’s simply too obvious not to cite a quotation attributed to former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan: “Events, dear boy, events.” Today’s visuals will be important, even though it’s a Sunday when fewer people pay attention to the news. (Embrace Bobby Jindal as a man who’s suffering, for his state, and not one of Joe Biden’s more obvious opponents.) So will the simple amount of time that the media devotes to this issue over the coming weeks, along with the reactions in Washington that will inevitably follow. (A hint: it’s seriously out of the way, but another visit right before going to Martha’s Vineyard would be a good idea. And note to speechwriters: keep a file for the 2012 acceptance, and this is in it.)
But the real question is the scope, scale, and persistence of the cleanup. How long will it be before the hard-pressed people of southern Louisiana and the Gulf States can rebuild their lives? Can the fisheries recover? Can we actually have offshore oil drilling and how will the Administration be seen to regulate it?
And will anyone care? Will this become the Santa Barbara oil spill? The Exxon Valdez (which has entered the popular culture)? Hurricane Katrina? Or Hurricane Ike, which despite its terrible destructive force seems to have become the forgotten disaster? In the final analysis, whether this becomes a defining moment for the Administration depends not only on the President or even the media, but us.