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He managed to get all the right agencies and beauracrats doing all that beauracrats do well, and he's got a lot of people thinking and watching and talking and analyzing.
What he hasn't done is been the kind of leader we needed, who would learn the situation, take charge, and make sure the right things were done. BP did what corporations are designed to do--it tried to fix the situation with as little expense to itself as possible. It tried the easiest fix, then the next easiest, played around with each when they failed to try to salvage their investment. There was no leader demanding they go straight for the most likely fix without concern for money. There was no leader to learn the situation and take over direction of the various agencies to make them work together most efficiently.
Obama had never been an executive in his life. Always a legislator, always a negotiator, always a lawyer. Always a concensus builder. Nothing in his history suggested he was ready to handle a situation like this. And now we see that he can't.
He responded more quickly and thoroughly than Bush did to Katrina, or anything else. He has a lot of people developing ideas and responses to the spill, to the environmental impact, and all of that. He's got a lot of action in action, and that's a good thing. In the long run we'll have a more aggressive response than if someone like Bush had been in charge, or someone like McCain. Bush would have just played air guitar while America burned. McCain would have tried to make his corporate sponsors happy by covering for them, swallowing costs with American dollars, trying to privatize the whole thing to funnel more money to his buddies, and ultimately he would just ignore the situation and claim there was no real emergency anyway.
Obama is better than either of those responses, but he hasn't been good enough. According to the timeline he got a lot of briefings, talked to a lot of people, and stood back while they all did their things. We needed more than that. We needed it a long time ago. Meanwhile, my Coast, my childhood home, the place I love most in the world, is being destroyed for the second time this decade, and the government response hasn't been adequate.
Sometimes when a patient in an Emergency Room has no chance, the doctors and nurses will go through the motions of trying to save and revive them, but not really do anything, because they don't think the patient can be saved. They know if they dance around long enough, nature will solve the problem for them, and no one can blame them for inaction. I wonder if that's happening here. Sooner or later the oil will stop spewing, or the Gulf will be so polluted it won't even matter. Obama and BP can say "We did everything we could. What would you have done differently?" and they can post the timelines to show a lot of activity. But I can't help but fear that they, or at least BP, is just going through the motions hoping things take care of themselves, and preparing a somber speech for the family.
And once again I'm sitting here wondering if I should apologize for Obama some more, or say what I really think about him, and I'm trying to remember if I've ever been this conflicted this early in any politician's term. Fuck it, let's go bowling.
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