Thank You James Carville

I never imagined that I would say this but here goes: “Thank you James Carville”. Probably for the first and only time I am in agreement with the outspoken Democrat strategist, who, as you know, taped a gut wrenching appeal to Obama to do something about the oil spill. Not sure which was the bigger story, his plea to stop the oil spill or the fact that a loyal Democrat was actually attacking Obama.

Of course the main villain in this horrible situation is BP. There is talk of investigating BP and the responsible government department. I agree that should be done, but not right now. We are in the middle of a major crisis and need to focus all of our resources on plugging the hole and cleaning up the Gulf and our marshes. Once that is done then we can play the blame game but sending down the Attorney General will only slow down the already slow process of fixing this mess. I also disagree with people who say that BP should be put out of business and everyone arrested. I think BP needs to continue to function as a viable company. I want them to keep making profits so that they will have the money to ensure that the Gulf Coast is eventually put back to the way it was before the spill and the fishermen compensated for their losses.

Then there is our president who has totally mishandled the oil spill crises. Perhaps Obama and his team were unaware of the enormity of the problem in the first few weeks. BP did lie to them about that. Yet after those initial lies Obama should not have been surprised if they continued to lie. Instead, the first thing Obama should have done is to have set up a shadow team, a group of experts who stayed with the top BP execs. This would eliminate Obama’s team from being continuously surprised by BP decisions and outcomes. It makes sense but I still don’t think this is being done.

Press Secretary Rober Gibbs, who only does what Obama tells him to do, added to the problems with either a surprisingly inept move or else a dangerously arrogant attempt to censor reporters. Gibbs had the gall to gather a handpicked group of journalists into a closed room and tell them to stop writing critical stories about the president's handling of the oil spill! You couldn't make up this kind of stuff. Luckily, it backfired but I shudder to think if it had worked...
Thanks to the pressure from Carville and the journalists, Obama finally gave in and held his first press conference in over 300 days. His last press conference was when Obama said the Boston police were stupid. No wonder the president has shied away from doing any since then. But this latest press conference was more of a farce than a success. In watching it I heard and saw a number of things that really bothered me. For instance, it ticked me off to hear Obama’s continuous assurance that they were on top of the oil spill since day one. Bull. Talk about BP lying to the public...

Through out his speech, Obama promised that he has experts meeting to determine the best course of action. Wrong! This is not what he should be doing. Obama isn’t in college or teaching or in a law firm where you have time to sit around discussing all sides of a plan and brainstorming on ideas. We need action now. We don’t have time to sit in committees talking it to death. Literally.

It also really maddened me when the president talked about the EPA reviewing proposed plans to see if they might negatively impact the environment. Excuse me? If they don’t do something now there won’t be an environment left. Besides it was the environmentalists who stopped any off shore drilling near coasts which then forced the oil companies to go further out to deep water to get the oil we need. Anyway, we don’t have time to meet with every Czar and committee that Obama throws at the problem to find the best solution. In times of emergencies a leader knows that we need to quickly decide on a plan which may be the second or third or even tenth best but can at least be enacted quickly to save our Gulf. Of course in an ideal world, BP would already have these plans for these worst case scenarios. Shame on them for being so unprepared and shame on us and what is turning out to be a very corrupt government department that was supposedly overseeing BP.

Another thing that angered me was the stage managing of the press conference. Obama held it on a pristine beach surrounded by a bunch of “cleaners” who had been shipped in for the day. The President’s staged walk down the empty beach was totally ridiculous. If they were trying to show that they were cleaning up beaches it backfired. In fact the entire thing was preposterous.

But what infuriated me the most about Obama’s visit to the Gulf was his complete lack of interaction with any of the Gulf Coast residents. Once again, Obama kept totally isolated from people. In comparison, I can easily imagine Bush or Clinton sitting in that local café talking to the fishermen, hugging teary eyed women or joking with a child. Not Obama. Is it because he is afraid of talking candidly since that always gets him in trouble? Or does he think he is above everyone else? Or does he share the common liberal view that southerners are dumb and basically unimportant so why bother to talk to them. (I do, though, wonder if he might have deigned to talk to them if they were African American.)

Whatever the reason, this entire situation shows Obama in a very negative light. He comes off as cold and distant when we need a caring, compassionate president. Obama’s indecisiveness shows the president to be weak when we need a commanding leader willing to take action. The one bright spot in this entire mess is that thanks to Carville's lead in pointing out that the emperer had no clothes on some journalists are actually reporting on the real Obama instead of fawning all over him. It's about time.