Another Narrative Bites The Dust

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_05/023714.php

ANOTHER NARRATIVE BITES THE DUST.... For several days, the national media seemed heavily invested in characterizing the BP oil spill disaster as "Obama's Katrina." Major, mainstream outlets -- not just Limbaugh and Fox News -- "concocted the absurd 'Obama's Katrina' claim in the first place, and then helped actively push it. Journalists did it by pointing to mostly faceless, imaginary 'critics' of the Obama administration in order to float the phony storyline."

But it didn't take. It may have had something to do with the intervention of other world events -- the attempted terrorism in Times Square, the European debt crisis, the British elections -- but vague criticism of the administration's response to the Gulf was relatively short-lived. Even conservatives found it easily dismissible.

When House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) held a press conference to blast the president's handling of the issue mid-week, he couldn't explain why he was unsatisfied, and most of the political world found it best to just blow off his shallow nonsense.

While the oil spill disaster remains an ongoing crisis -- indeed, oil continues to gush into the Gulf as I type -- the questions surrounding the speed of the Obama administration's response seem to have been answered. To the wire service's credit, the AP's H. Josef Hebert and Erica Werner published a lengthy report this morning on the "aggressive" federal response to the disaster.

The Gulf region, ravaged five years earlier by Hurricane Katrina, was on the verge of a second ecological disaster. Would there be a repeat of the bureaucratic bungling that marked President George W. Bush's response to the hurricane?

While the Obama administration has faced second-guessing about the speed and effectiveness of some of its actions, a narrative pieced together by The Associated Press, based on documents, interviews and public statements, shows little resemblance to Katrina in either the characterization of the threat or the federal government's response.

Reading the detailed piece, it's hard to imagine how the administration's response, given the information available, could have been better. That's cold comfort given the severity of the huge oil spill and the ecological, economic, and environmental consequences. No matter how efficient and thorough the administration's response, the disaster is no less a disaster. Taking the White House off the to-be-blamed list isn't as important as the ongoing effort to deal with the crisis itself.

Nevertheless, the political drive to blame President Obama for a sluggish response looks increasingly ridiculous.

The White House's detractors will have to find something else to obsess over. The Katrina comparison, comically flawed when it was first raised, has been proven baseless.

-Steve Benen

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iGw5j_drnBauWXcnC9-obnID4GNAD9FILHSG0
Obama oil response: aggressive as crisis unfolded

[Captain Hilts]

1. That meme was one of the Right's more lame efforts. nt

[dumpdabaggers]

7. I knew the second it happened that this would be the Limbaugh-Hannity spin.

They are such predictabe A-holes.

[applegrove]

13. Obama has a heart. Bush didn't have one. That is the difference.

[Dr Morbius]

2. It's practice. They'll dust it off and use it again during the next disaster. (nt)

[Grey]

3. Do you mean Cheney's Chernobyl?

Cheney's Chernobyl

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Thank you, Skippy.

And spread the word, people. It's not Obama's Katrina, it's Cheney's Chernobyl.

How so? Check out William Galston at TNR (read it all -- it's important):

First, an oil-drilling procedure called cementing -- which is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor -- has been identified as a leading cause of well blowouts. Indeed, a 2007 study by the Minerals Management Service (or MMS, the division of the Interior Department responsible for offshore drilling) found that this procedure was implicated in 18 out of 39 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over the 14 years it studied -- more than any other factor. Cementing, which was handled by Halliburton, had just been completed prior to the recent explosion. The Journal notes that Halliburton was also the cementer on a well that suffered a big blowout last August in the Timor Sea off Australia. While BP's management has been responsive to press inquiries and relatively forthcoming as to its responsibility, Halliburton has refused to answer any questions -- an all-too-familiar stance on its part.

[Tarheel_Dem]

5. +1

[Captain Hilts]

9. That, and calling the spill 'Lake Palin' are great. nt

[annabanana]

16. This Country will not be Right until this man is in jail for the rest of hils

miserable life.

[CrispyQ]

4. A more apt comparison would be how Obama responded to the flood in TN,

which I understand was very good.

I flipped through CNN the other night & noticed that there was an 800 number for FEMA for folks to call. I don't recall that during Katrina.

[MadMaddie]

18. Napolitano was on the news and said that FEMA and the gov

were going to help the best they could.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

6. I think we should keep using it ourselves....

Bush's Katrina: Colossal Cluster-fuck
Obama's Katrina: Competent Response

Note: Only DU would the word "cluster-fuck" actually appear in the Spell Check!

[impik]

8. Some people here should learn that lesson themselves

[amborin]

10. Obama's Int Dept exempted this BP project from Env Impact Study; if the study

had been conducted, as required, this catastrophe would not have happened

in many ways, therefore, it's worse; at least Katrina, as horrific as it was, was due to longstanding army corps levy failures and natural storms; this BP catastrophe was due to detestable behavior

[FrenchieCat]

11. When one's mantra throughout an election season is "Drill, Baby, Drill"......

when an oil spill happens precisely due to Drilling,
it is best to STFU and lay low.....otherwise,
one starts looking quite insane blaming the one
who has been quite resistant to the idea until very recently,
and then only in order to sway the "drill, Baby, drill" folks to support
legislation pushing a much wider array of solutions to our
energy problems.

[Jade Fox]

12. The Right admits Katrina was Bush's downfall.....

That's what I find interesting about this attempt to smear Obama.

[Merlot]

14. That was my first thought too

By calling this horrible disaster comparable to katrina, the repubs were admitting that bushco failed in his handling of katrina.

kinda makes it harder for them to defend bushco after saying that...

[Jade Fox]

15. Conservatives use the "you're just as bad" defense.....

quite a bit, not seeming to realize what they are saying about themselves.

[saltpoint]

17. Agree. They tried awful awful hard to make the BP disaster "Obama's

Katrina" and it was a no-go.

Benen is right.

It's interesting that if they were targeting Obama for embarrassment by calling the Gulf disaster "Obama's Katrina," they are tacitly acknowledging that George W. Bush abandoned his responsibilities when Katrina struck.

Unfortunately for the rightwing kooks out there, the Obama administration has been dutiful in its response to the BP event and the Tennessee flooding. The same could not have been said for the Bush administration when Katrina came ashore.