The leak in the Gulf is not Obama’s fault.
Whatever happened 5000 ft below sea level happened independent of Obama being President. Things break, bad things happen. And Obama being President didn’t hustle this disaster into existence. Nothing he could have done, or not have done, would have prevented this from happening.
All of which makes this just so much more the foolish:
“This is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about … my job is to get this fixed. … I take responsibility … I’m fully engaged,” he insisted near the end of his first formal, full-scale White House news conference in almost a year.
Lest there be any confusion: “The American people should know that from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort,” he said.
Asserting control comes with a calculated risk. It is Obama’s disaster now and any failure to stop the gusher will likely be his.
He’s wrong, of course. There’s nothing the Federal Government can do in terms of getting this fixed. They simply lack the expertise to handle this type of catastrophe. The experts in this type of thing are the folks doing what they do to fix it. And the Feds can’t just wiggle their nose and make it better.
Now, with that said, can Obama and the Feds work harder to scoop oil before it hits the shore? Maybe. Can Obama work harder in arranging a broad multi-corporation response? Maybe. Can Obama work harder in many many ways? Sure. But the responsibility isn’t his.
All this, of course, is different that saying that Obama’s response isn’t what the public expects. For example:
“It took Mr. Obama 12 days to show up in the region. Democrats criticized President George W. Bush for waiting four days after Katrina to go to New Orleans,”
And Mr. Obama hasn’t exactly been engendering the spirit of cooperation when he allows his Administration to “keep the boots on the throats of BP” throughout this event.
No. Obama didn’t cause this and he can do precious little to fix it. But he isn’t acting like a President should act.