Expose Obama
May 28th, 2010By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
BP Oilbama is taking some hits for the oil spill and his lackadaisical response Back in 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama critiqued the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. "There is not a sense of urgency out of this White House and this administration," he declared, two years after the disaster struck. Now, more than a month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank, with a massive oil spill making landfall on the Gulf coast, Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal is the one calling for "more urgency." The only rush in Washington is over where to shift the blame.
Mr. Obama apparently never had a plan for responding to this disaster. The White House seemingly felt that if the administration didn’t treat it as a crisis, it would go away. If fingers were to be pointed, they could direct them at BP. That political strategy worked well for a week or so. But BP has failed to come to grips with the spill, and the White House, lacking ready solutions, looks feeble and rudderless.
When the rig blew up on April 20, the U.S. Coast Guard made a commendable effort to save lives of oil-rig workers. After that, the government assumed the posture of a deer in the headlights. It took a week for Mr. Obama to issue the panicky command directive "plug the damn hole," but he did not otherwise seem concerned. He waited almost two weeks to visit Louisiana, being held up by higher priorities like meeting U2’s Bono in the Oval Office and doing a standup routine at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Military assets were available for immediate response to the catastrophe, but the Department of Homeland Security had to make a request before they could act. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano seemed unaware of this requirement. She waited nine days to declare the spill of "national significance" and admitted she didn’t know the Defense Department had any equipment that might be helpful. (For the record, the Naval Research Laboratory pioneered oil-spill control methods in the 1970s, and the Navy maintains oil-containment gear stockpiles around the world for emergency response to just these types of catastrophes.)
Mary Landrieu: President Obama will pay politically for spill Response
May 28th, 2010By MANU RAJU, Politico
Democrat Landrieu says Obama has been a little behindSen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) says President Barack Obama will pay a political price for his lack of visibility in the Gulf region during the catastrophic BP oil spill.
“The president has not been as visible as he should have been on this, and he’s going to pay a political price for it, unfortunately,” Landrieu told POLITICO. “But he’s going down tomorrow, he’s made some good announcements today, and if he personally steps up his activity, I think that would be very helpful.”
Landrieu’s comments came as Obama spoke to reporters in the East Room of the White House, defending his administration’s response to the ecological disaster. The president plans to head to the Gulf to inspect the oil spill on Friday.
“Those who think that we were either slow in our responses or lacked urgency don’t know the facts,” Obama said Thursday. “This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred.”
The Politics of the Gulf Oil Spill
May 28th, 2010by Michael Reagan, Townhall
Obama’s response has been pathetic compared to Jindal’sSince last month’s oil-spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, two very different leadership styles have been on display. On the one hand we have President Obama, who took nine days before making a public statement on the spill. On the other, we have Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has been intensely and vocally involved from the beginning.
Now, we must all recognize that during the course of a presidency unexpected and unprecedented events will occur that cannot be blamed on the administration. And this is one of those cases. However, it is not always the event itself that causes the most trouble — it is the response to the situation that usually gets you.
In the wake of recent criticism, President Obama has been forced to backtrack and step up his attention to the oil spill. The spill — which may have already released 90 million gallons of oil into the Gulf and has now reached the marshes of Louisiana, "oiling" some 84 miles of the coast —is undoubtedly the greatest national disaster of the Obama presidency. Yet despite intense Democratic criticism for President Bush’s response to a natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina, in this same state, President Obama’s response has been underwhelming, to say the least.
