Frank Rich: Obama’s Katrina? Maybe Worse

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30rich.html?hp

Obama’s Katrina? Maybe Worse
By FRANK RICH
Published: May 28, 2010


FOR Barack Obama’s knee-jerk foes, of course it was his Katrina. But for the rest of us, there’s the nagging fear that the largest oil spill in our history could yet prove worse if it drags on much longer. It might not only wreck the ecology of a region but capsize the principal mission of the Obama presidency.

Before we look at why, it would be helpful to briefly revisit that increasingly airbrushed late summer of 2005. Whatever Obama’s failings, he is infinitely more competent at coping with catastrophe than his predecessor. President Bush’s top disaster managers — the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, as well as the notorious “Brownie” — professed ignorance of New Orleans’s humanitarian crisis a full day after the nation had started watching it live in real time on television. When Bush finally appeared, he shunned the city entirely and instead made a jocular show of vowing to rebuild the coastal home of his party’s former Senate leader, Trent Lott. He never did take charge.

The Obama administration has been engaged with the oil spill from the start — however haltingly and inarticulately at times. It was way too trusting of BP but was never AWOL. For all the second-guessing, it’s still not clear what else the president might have done to make a definitive, as opposed to cosmetic, difference in plugging the hole: yell louder at BP, send in troops and tankers, or, as James Carville would have it, assume the role of Big Daddy? The spill is not a Tennessee Williams play, its setting notwithstanding, and it’s hard to see what more drama would add, particularly since No Drama Obama’s considerable talents do not include credible play-acting.

But life isn’t fair, and this president is in a far tougher spot in 2010 than his predecessor was in 2005.

snip//

The only good news from the oil spill is that when catastrophe strikes, even some hard-line conservatives, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, start begging for the federal government to act, and act big. It’s the crunch moment for government to make its case — as Obama belatedly started to do on Thursday. But words are no match for results. As long as the stain washes up on shore, the hole in BP’s pipe will serve the right as a gaping hole in the president’s argument for expanded government supervision of, for starters, Big Oil and big banks. It’s not just the gulf that could suffer for decades to come.

[Turbineguy]

1. I like the term

Cheney's Chernobyl.

It rolls off the tongue better and it's true. Of course there is some latency.

[flpoljunkie]

2. Big Bank and Big Oil Regulation--'If not now, when? If not us, who?' - Barack Obama

This paragraph stood out in Rich's column:

Obama’s recurrent tardiness in defining exactly what he wants done on a given issue — a lapse also evident in the protracted rollout of the White House’s specific health care priorities — remains baffling, as does his recent avoidance of news conferences. Such diffidence does not convey a J.F.K.-redux in charge of a neo-New Frontier activist government.

[Imajika]

3. Maybe it can be used as a way to create temporary jobs?

Since it is pretty clear BP won't be able to afford to clean it all up, perhaps the cleanup can be some sort of jobs program?

If the Federal Government is going to have to pay anyway, maybe tens of thousands of people can be hired and trained to be environmental cleanup specialists or something?

Just a thought.

[Jennicut]

4. Rich's argument kind of confuses me. Because we had lax oversight, that

means people will get more pissed at the govt. and therefore will want even less oversight? If true, our country is pathetic.

[hulka38]

5. It will serve as a political parable for when you

allow monied interests to set policy, triangulate politically and generally not stand for anything.

[Cha]

6. Rich isn't always

on the pulse of what's going on.

Sometimes he's so freakin' tone deaf but that doesn't stop him from going on and on.