Cleaning Up After Bush Taking Toll on Obama

[babylonsister]

http://services.newsweek.com/id/238610

Communication Gulf

The president, consumed with cleaning up after his predecessors, can't just strip emotion from the public parts of his job.
By Jonathan Alter | NEWSWEEK

Published Jun 4, 2010


The BP oil spill is the perfect metaphor for Barack Obama's presidency so far. His first 500 days in office have been—with the significant exception of health-care reform—consumed in cleaning up the messes left by his predecessors in the financial sector, the auto business, Afghanistan, and now the oil and gas industry, where "regulators" in the Denver office of the Minerals Management Service under President Bush were literally sleeping with the industry reps they were supposed to be licensing. Obama's fate is to head up what Donald Regan (Ronald Reagan's chief of staff) called "the shovel brigade"—the crew cleaning up the dung when the elephants leave the circus.

Obama's response has been to shovel diligently at the Wall Street–GM-Kandahar-Gulf Coast cleanup sites. But having properly stripped all emotion out of his behind-closed-doors decision making, he has neglected to add it back in for the public parts of the job. He forgets that being a great professor isn't the same as being a great communicator. The inspirational figure of the campaign is under the delusion that he will be cheapening himself and the office if he uses memorable soundbites in the theater of the presidency. For all his study of history, Obama somehow has failed to notice that Lincoln's "house divided" and FDR's "fear itself" were, well, soundbites.

The result was that his May 27 news conference left no imprint. He even failed to drive home the point that BP, not taxpayers, would foot the entire bill for the cleanup. It's understandable that Obama likes to operate on his own timetable, not the media's. But just as he told single-payer liberals during the health-care debate that they have to deal with the world as it is, not as they would like it to be, so he must deal with the superficial media world as it is, not as he wants. The president's slow political reflexes are beginning to wreck his game.

Obama's reaction to all the easy Katrina-Carter comparisons has been characteristically philosophical. I'm told by a senior White House official that he figures it's "our time in the barrel," and the accusations that he's an incompetent cold fish are "something to be aware of but not panic about." The easiest way to become Jimmy Carter, Obama rightly figures, is to drop everything else and focus solely on the crisis at hand, as Carter did in 1979–80 when Americans were held hostage in Iran for 444 days. So Obama postponed his trip to Asia and not much else. Among other issues he would have to ignore if he let the spill hijack his administration is, ironically, sanctions against Iran. Financial regulation, immigration, and Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court would also get swallowed by the gulf region. Focus groups run by Democrats show the public doesn't want Obama to stop multitasking.

Even so, some optical adjustment is essential. The White House political team is furious with James Carville for calling out the president in public as insufficiently forceful. But Carville was right to do so—it helped dent the imperviousness. Obama is planning an address to the nation, his first prime-time speech in a place (still undetermined) other than Congress. According to reports, he'll draw a bright line between the spill, which BP owns, and the restoration and recovery, which he owns. And he'll use the speech and several scheduled visits to the gulf to point out the need for comprehensive energy reform. The White House's new legislative strategy is to apparently attach a landmark change in energy policy—namely, a price on carbon—to the bill bringing aid to the region. Just as the 1969 oil spill that soiled the coast near Santa Barbara, Calif., helped lead to Earth Day and the establishment of the Clean Air Act, perhaps this spill will generate the nation's first true clean-energy program.

But for that to happen, Obama must be seen as an emotive and creative leader. He has to not just "feel our pain," but mobilize an army of the unemployed to clean up the tar balls that, after hurricane season hits, could spread across a swath of the South. No one expects Barack Obama to be Aquaman, diving a mile beneath the surface of the ocean to cap an oil well with his bare hands. But we do demand that he show us he's leading, not just tell us that he has.

[Jennicut]

1. The only good that will come from this oil spill will be to concentrate

on alternative energy. Obama needs to keep talking about that.

[Captain Hilts]

4. It's a teaching moment. He's a good teacher, so he should seize the opportunity

this crisis has created.

[Beetwasher]

7. I Think This A Big Learning Moment For Obama As Well

I have no doubt that he will use this as an opportunity to teach and pivot to alternate energy sources.

But I also think he may be learning quite a bit too, which is why we're seeing this change in tactic. He's heard the criticism about not being emotional enough and he's responding.

He's never had to deal with a catastrophe like this, perhaps no one has. It's an odd thing to gauge how a leader should react publically since it's sort of happening in slow motion. I think he gauged he had some time to try to deal with it(from a PR standpoint) one way, saw that it was not working and changed tactic.

[Captain Hilts]

20. Yes. I think he got taken by PhRMA and he also tried to give BP the benefit of the doubt.

I think he'll be tougher from here on out. At least, I hope so.

[WhiteTara]

14. unfortunately, he still thinks nuclear

is an alternative less dangerous than oil.

[golfguru]

24. Obama is very smart to think nuclear...

He is more intelligent than most folks here and everywhere.
You should trust his judgement over yours.

[WhiteTara]

27. that's what they told me as a child about

doctors and priests.

And I don't think the people of Vermont living around the Yankee power plant would agree that it is clean. Their water is now contaminated with tritium.

[golfguru]

31. A few living near nuclear power plant? How about millions suffering

from coal miners lungs, emphysema from coal & oil burning air pollution ,
coal mine accidents, oil refinery blow ups, deep water oil well blow ups
contaminating hundreds of miles of beaches, not to mention horrendous
amount of deficit dollars spent on foreign oil?

Listen, there is no perfect energy source. You have to weigh the good and
the bad.

[Celebration]

2. we can always hope n/t

[jaxx]

3. If President O was not a 'creative' leader we'd be in a world of hurt.

Funny how those who make their money criticizing ignore the many good things that have been, and are being, done. Alter became a media voice because he can sometimes agree with KO. Without that he's just another writer with an angle. Lead with that next time Jonathan Alter.

[Beetwasher]

5. This Is An Excellent Article, This Is Valid Criticism Of Obama Well Presented

And I agree with Alter.

Obama needs to step up the propoganda. It's unfortunate because it's such a shallow thing to do, but unfortunately the country is not a class at Harvard and you have to speak in soundbites to the dummies.

I believe Obama knows this which is why we're seeing the change in tone and increased propoganda (and I'm not using this word perjoratively, merely literally).

And everyone who loses a job due to the spill should absolutely be paid a good salary to clean it up, and then some (and be well protected while doing so). All on BP and Big Oil's tab.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

8. what you said. n/t

[cilla4progress]

9. Absolutely...agreed

AND be issued hazmat equipment....esp. gas masks (funded, of course, by BP and the oil industry) with which to do the clean up!

Oh - and coagulants, NOT dispersants!

[GoCubsGo]

11. Anyone who has to be out there cleaning up should be paid more than a "good" salary

Anyone who has to spend their days out in that muck, heat, and humidity dressed in a Hazmat suit and respirator should be getting AT LEAST $50/hour plus 100% paid GOOD health insurance and lots of paid vacation. I spend summers in chest waders under those conditions, and believe me, it's no picnic. And, I don't need to wear a respirator on top of it.

And, I couldn't agree more regarding increasing the propaganda. Sadly, you are absolutely correct about the need to speak in soundbites. Part of President Obama's problem is that he treats everyone like adults, when so many (e.g., the Fox "News" and right-wing talk radio audiences) have the mental capacity of a five-year-old. I weep for my country.

[AndyA]

6. Obama and Holder need to investigate Bushco.

They need to expose the dirty behind the doors deals.

They need to show who profited from Bush's years in office.

They need to reveal the lies and the manipulations.

They need to show how the media worked in concert with the Republicans to skew public opinion.

If they'd do this, there's no way the GOP would pick up any seats come November. Only the die hard GOPers would still vote for the party.

I suspect that super secret Energy Policy that Cheney oversaw would reveal enough to keep the justice department busy for a few years. I'd fast track it to get the info out, the public will be furious especially considering what's going on in the Gulf right now.

Do you suppose there's any connection to the Bush Energy Policy and high gas prices in 2008? Do you suppose there's any connection between the high gas prices and the crash of 2008?

This would be something the GOP would NOT be able to explain, because every one of them voted in lockstep to support Bush.

If Obama truly had balls, he'd do it. Why he hasn't is anyone's guess, but it makes him complicit in those crimes and activities.

[depakid]

10. Sorry- but the Obama administrsation owns the spill AND its aftermath

based on the facts and public statements on the record. Better to cop to it early on and let the nation know in no uncertain terms what actions are being taken to remedy the situation and ensure that it never happens again.

Failure to do so only invites further problems down the line....

[Kahuna]

12. Bullshit. Obama has nothing to do with it.

[IndianaGreen]

15. Obama announced increased offshore drilling on March 31 of this year

Obama felt that offshore drilling was safe!

Who put Salazar in charge of Interior, but Obama?

[FrenchieCat]

25. Obama announced compromise on Offshore Oil Drilling in order to

pass Energy legislation....because that's the only way that it was gonna happen,
and even then, maybe not.

The PB oil leak would have occured whether he would have made the announcement or not, and
it is a result of deregulation by previous administrations, drowning the Govt in the bathtub,
64% of Americans supporting Offshore Oil Drilling, and Americans not doing a damn thing
to wean ourselves off of fossil fuel, including doing nothing about conservation, upping gas mileage, or none of the shit that works. It is the same reason that the Mine disaster happened;
exactly; our fucked up collective addiction to oil, and the oil's industries grip via having had 2 fucked up oil men in office for 8 long ass torturous years.

If you fucking think that this administration in 16 months was supposed to anticipate every fucking thing that was ever going to happen and fix it before it did happen, you would then be, unfair, irrational and unreasonable. It would be like those who think we can have million of gallons of oil in the Gulf, and think not a fish nor fowl will be harmed...so everytime one sees a bird drenched in oil, they lose it all over again over again, like they don't have a clue WHY this spill is being called a disaster. Reminds me Candy Crowley asking Gov. Crist today....."what happens if any oil get to land? can you guarantee that it won't"....like she still doesn't know why to this day, her network is calling this Day Number whatever of a Catastrophe.

While I'm at it, I'm getting tired of the news media portraying this as worse than 2,000 human beings losing their lives in Katrina. A way of life is not more valuable than an actual life...because if people are still alive, they can actually do something else. when you're dead, there are not other options. On MSNBC, they had a family with a graveyard in the backyard with words on crosses signifying what they will lose in this disaster. The most important, they said, was "Family Life". I looked at that, and wondered whether when those 2,000 people died in the hurricane, whether they had 2,000 crosses in the yard....with the names of the dead, with a big sign blaming the Federal government?

I should be suprised, but I'm not. Hey, some people even like animals better than people.

Anyways, keep spreading your GOP welcomed propaganda. You're good at it.

[TheKentuckian]

29. The limit to your scope of vision in this matter is disturbing

How in the name of all that is good can you minimize this epic debacle down to a simplistic human death count?
How many deaths will this eventually account for? You think those that will starve or those who will get sick and die slowly and painfully mean nothing.

It also is pretty disgusting that all of this truly innocent lives in the wild are passes off like shit off a shoe. No count of their lives has any significance to some I guess. Even some extinctions that wipe away God's creatures we are supposed to have stewardship over is what, a sigh at most?

Thinking like that is small and hard. Humankind is not an island so set apart from the rest of creation that the rape of the environment and the wanton eradication of much life will be without consequence.

The saddest thing is the most probable source of this indifference is a pitiful effort to minimize an epic catastrophe is to protect a politician, one that will only be in trouble if his actions match the horrid and callous attitude being sold by some folks.

[phleshdef]

26. Yet not one hole was drilled as a result of the March 31st announcement.

Although its politically easy to get away with, conflating the March 31st announcement of future drilling plans that have yet to see the light of day with a disaster tied to drilling thats been going on in the gulf for decades is not fair in reality.

Even though its true that regulation at the federal level has needed a complete overhaul for quite some time, its still just unproveable speculation that it really would have made a difference. The truth of this story lies in the events the day that this explosion occurred. People on that rig KNEW they were being ordered to do something stupid. The conflict is well documented and BP corporate made them do it anyway. All the regulation in the world will not prevent a disaster if you have people doing something that they know they should not be doing. Of all the facts and all the mere speculation, the only thing we know for sure is that if the people on the rig that day had been listened to, this would not have happened. You can play 6 degrees of blame and go back and forth on it for years on end. The reality is, people who were doing the job knew there was a safe path and a not so safe path to performing the duties they were performing and they willfully and knowingly took the not so safe path and lost the bet.

[depakid]

16. His adminstration has everything to do with it

Not only did they ratify Republican drilling policies (with Obama himself vouching for its safety) but they did so without having put their regulatory house in order.

All this stuff is coming out in gruesome detail- last year's 2+ month long Montara spill, the shenanigans and exemptions at the MMS (documented by GAO reports) BP's safety record- all of it.

Better get ahead of that curve, rather than be stuck behind it when the report(s) hit the press.

[senseandsensibility]

13. huh?

BP owns it. The * administration owns it. And part of the problem is that this administration has not made that clear.

[depakid]

18. Best way to deflect it back to Bush et al. is to own up to the problems

It's not like they weren't well known a long time ago:

January 1, 2009

What the Interior Department needs right now is someone willing to bust heads when necessary and draw the line against the powerful commercial groups — developers, ranchers, oil and gas companies, the off-road vehicle industry — that have long treated the department as a public extension of their private interests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02fri1.html?_r=1

[ProSense]

21. "It's not like they weren't well known a long time ago:" It's not like anyone was

paying attention to what the administration was doing.

WSJ: Do your plans involve structuring the agency differently? Spinning it off as independent agency? What direction are you thinking about?

Mr. Salazar: The first thing that needs to be done is to take a review of what happened as a result of the Inspector General's report and making sure that the follow-up actions were appropriate, including the criminal dispositions, the personnel matters and the recommendations that were created.

We're taking a look at all of those and will make some decisions around all of those things with respect to actions we know happened before I came here. Secondly, we'll be looking forward and seeing what it is that needs to be done to make sure that the ethical lapses that occurred during the Bush administration years under MMS do not recur again. We want to make sure we have the highest ethical standards and people who are working within MMS and all of the Department of Interior agencies are complying with those high ethical standards. We're just at the beginning here, but we'll be taking a look at royalty reform issues and what kinds of changes we might need to make. It is very early in time for us to move forward with any specific recommendation but I have many questions. One question that leaps out is, there is no organic statutory act for MMS and its existence. It was essentially created out of a secretarial executive order, so we may be looking at legislation with respect to MMS and respect to royalty reform. We're asking a number of questions about those issues and we'll have a much clearer picture in the coming weeks and months

WSJ: Why is the fact that it was created by an executive order significant? What does that tell you?

Mr. Salazar: This is really an engine of a huge amounts of money that belong to the American taxpayers and these are the resources of America -- the oil and natural gas resources of the Gulf and the outer continental shelf.

We're talking about multi-billion dollars of revenue that are overseen by this organization. It's important that it have the right parameters. I'm not saying it doesn't today, but I'm saying there's a very important question that needs to be asked and answered. And we're asking those questions.

WSJ: Do you think MMS needs to be broken off from Interior?

Mr. Salazar: Maybe given a higher level status within Interior. Maybe having statutory mechanisms that define its mission and how it works within Interior. I don't know yet enough about it but it just strikes me that… you take for example another agency, the Office of Surface Mining, for the Department of Interior that was created out of the 1977 passage of the Surface Mining Reclamation Act. There's a statutory basis for that office. There's no statutory basis for MMS and yet it performs this hugely important function, including helping us map out what were going to do with the OCS in the years and decades ahead. It may be appropriate for it to have an organic act that Congress approves and the president signs. I haven't made those decisions yet but we'll be exploring all those options

WSJ: When you say royalty reform, are you thinking about doing away with the royalty in kind program?

Mr. Salazar: We're going to put everything on the table. I think everything needs to be looked at. It's a new day at the Department of Interior, and we need to examine what makes the most sense for the American people. These are American resources and American treasures, and we need to make sure we're providing the right kind of protection, oversight and stewardship of these resources for the American people.

WSJ: To what extent do you think your agency is going to defend some of the changes in environmental policies that were made in the last months of the Bush administration?

Mr. Salazar: We're going to review all those issues you mention. Like with all actions of an agency this size, there are good things and there are bad things that were done. Those things that need to be changed will be changed. Those things that are okay will be kept in place. But I expect that there will be changes with some of the midnight regulations and actions that were taken by the Bush administration.

link

Ken Salazar Announces Tougher Oil And Gas Regulations

[ProSense]

23. "Best way to deflect it back to Bush et al. is to own up to the problems"

How exactly does that work? Are you suggesting that Bush shouldn't be criticized?

[depakid]

34. Bush will be criticized plenty- but much more so if the administration does what Bush

or the Republicans would never do. Which I've outlined here several times before. People might actually feel sympathy for this administration- rather than disdain (although in any case, my bet is that Salazar is gone by New Years).

[dave29]

17. so what, pray tell, exactly, does BP own?

?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

30. Depakid, you are off target

BP, transocean and Halliburton own the spill. Obama's administration did cop to it early and did inform the public. The government did not have all the necessary resources to cope with this type of disaster. They were doing the best they could and were bringing in help. The government will not have the rescources to tackle a major radioactive or epidemic disaster. The best thing that can happen now is to wean this country off oil with renewable energy and stop new drilling. Unfortunately congress and the past administrations de regulated the oil industry so much that it had a mind of its own. Its like taming a horrible beast.

[depakid]

33. BP and their contracers are only doing what any hundreds of corporations do when left on their own

It's already come out that levels of redundancy required in Norway and Brazil- Brazil of all places, weren't required (and hence weren't installed).

That lack of concern for safety (akin to what's been going on with mining in the United States) is what's responsible for the spill. That's what the commission and other investigations are going to show. Now, the administration can either own up to that- since it DID happen 16 months into their watch- or they can try to point the finger elsewhere, and look impotent and ineffectual. Or worse, be equated with the same sort of cronyism as their predecessors.

If I were advising them, I'd tell them to own up and start taking highly visible steps to hold both the corporations AND the corrupt or incompetent members of their own administration and regulatory agencies accountable.

[enough already 2]

32. Horseshit

This is Bushit's fault, just like everything else.

[impik]

19. In two years you will all get your "emotional leader"

It's going to be fun to watch.

[PopSixSquish]

22. Donald Regan (Ronald Reagan's chief of staff) called "the shovel brigade"— Oh the Irony

but I bet that goes over the head of most...

[gory]

28. jonathan alter supported torture in 2001

http://www.newsweek.com/2001/11/04/time-to-think-about-torture.html

Yeah let's listen to opinions by this "liberal." I don't remember Krugman or Markos, to cite real liberals, ever advocating torture.

[Cha]

37. Thanks..he sure as hell is not always

right.

[GeorgeGist]

35. To any White House Staffers listening in ...

Please suggest to the President that he also draw a bright line around the Gulf of Mexico, which We don't own, ...

[Cha]

36. I don't agree on the disingenuous

whining of carville and his fucked up cheney-mediawhore wife.

President Obama is a creative leader and he emotes well enough for me..if not for Alter and the empty-rager.

"No one expects Barack Obama to be Aquaman, diving a mile beneath the surface of the ocean to cap an oil well with his bare hands." Well, they damn well act like they do, Jonathan.

Don't agree.