PrintJune 17, 2010
Why Blame Obama?
The Right saw Obama as its AntiChrist and the Left as its Savior from go; the Republicans have refused his agenda but offered none of their own. Now, the Right and the Left are jointly attacking him over spilled oil. Why? Obama isn't president of the oil extraction industry; he has no geological or engineering degrees so far as we know. He's no oilman; he's a politician. And the BP leak hasn't approached the magnitude of the Gulf's 1979 Pemex blowout at Ixtoc No.1.
Franklin Roosevelt drove the Japanese Empire to attack Pearl Harbor by denying it access to oil; nobody blamed him. Harry Truman warred against North Korea without the Constitutional declaration by Congress; few blamed him. In 2010, an oil-drilling barge leased by BP mysteriously blew up and burned; both Left and Right are suddenly screaming at Obama because an ongoing seabed oil leak resulted.
Obama did not blow up the barge (though it would be nice to know what did) nor can he swim down 5,000 feet and stick his thumb into the pipe. So, why is all this now his fault?
For the Right, everything bad that happens on his watch has to be his fault just as everything aimed at Obama by the Right is deflected onto Bush by the Left: Politics as usual, forget reality.
For the Left, it's his fault because he hasn't shut off the oil economy in favor of green as they expected; they are disappointed lovers jilted by their Savior in favor of a modicum of reality.
Both Left and Right are at three sigma limits from reality in their opposite directions. Obama has put himself into the untenable middle; an exercise in amateurish politics.
Obama thrust his presidential face through the hole in the canvas backdrop of a political pie-throwing contest; he has made himself a target with nothing to gain but a pie in the face. Dumb, politically. He can't shut off the leak; his vilification of those who can-and will, as soon as possible, since it's costing them billions-simply attracts attention to his own ineffectuality. His failure to shut down the obstructions by his own bureaucrats (who had given the barge a safety award) preserving the Jones Act protection of U.S. maritime unions by excluding ready and qualified foreign help shows as favoring political goals at the cost of citizens, a lose-lose scenario.
Our President seems unable to distinguish between politics and leadership; he knew how to get the job; he is not showing that he knows how to perform it.
President Obama is not responsible for the Gulf oil leak; neither is George Bush. We haven't been told how it happened; we don't know if anyone actually is responsible.
The President set himself up in public as in charge; he made himself responsible for something he couldn't control. He didn't have to; that was dumb; that's why he gets the blame.
