President Obama is taking a lot of criticism, most of it valid, for his response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For once, it seems pundits on the left and the right agree in their assessment of the President's leadership and demeanor. He's distant when he needs to be hands-on; he's cerebral when he needs to be visceral; he's contemplative when he needs to be decisive. Those in the media, whether novice bloggers or well established journalists, are giving voice to the frustrations and helplessness Americans feel while watching oil gush relentlessly from the depths of the ocean.
But I think there is another phenomenon at work here, another layer in the unfolding drama of the president versus BP. Mr. Obama's failures with regard to leadership style, and his seeming inability to channel American ingenuity and moxie into a solution to this crisis, actually reflect the realities of the American psyche at this moment.
Take, for instance, President Obama's reluctance to wrest control of the cleanup operation from BP. The seemingly incongruous judgment mirrors Americans' own schizophrenic relationship with Big Oil. On the one hand, we depend on energy corporations to drive the economy, and to slake America's quenchless thirst for cheap, reliable fuel. We just don't necessarily want to know how that feat is achieved, and we demand swift, punishing retribution when our own energy demands wreak havoc on the economy and environment.
Washington players lambast the Obama Administration for regulatory negligence and government incompetence. They chastise the President's reluctance to draw a hard, bright line in the sand on the issue of deep water offshore drilling. But Americans don't want any action the President may take to cost jobs, increase energy prices, or alter our oil-dependent lifestyles. We want the oil industry to change the way it does business without any layoffs, painful transitions, or personal sacrifice. And we want to drive big cars, live in over-sized homes, drink water out of bottles, and choose plastic at the grocery store check-out without having to suffer images of oil-soaked pelicans or tar-stained beaches.
Critics have voiced consternation at White House disengagement, and have questioned why the President spends more time talking to experts than devising a bold plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. But our representatives in Congress, and we as a people, focus on the politics, rather than the policies, of climate change, offshore drilling, and fossil fuel consumption and emissions. This argument has been raging for over 20 years, yet no visible progress can be measured. We are happy to argue about what should be done, but unwilling to make any of the hard choices that might save us from similar disasters in the future.
Finally, President Obama has raised eyebrows and invited derision for his perceived thin skin and testiness with regard to his media coverage in this crisis. He wants to blame the cable news culture and media preoccupation with stylistic and semantic faux pas for his inability to connect with the American public, and for the disastrous approval ratings of his administration related to the Gulf spill. Yet we, as Americans, are similarly prickly when forced to face our own complicity in this crisis. We are a good, generous, warm people, and we do not want to be associated with the insatiable greed and poor decision-making that led to this disaster. We, too, look for others to blame, and point the finger at BP, at the President, and at the federal government more generally. But we never take a moment to glance in the mirror and look at ourselves. We refuse to see that our lifestyles and livelihoods play an integral part in this drama, and that we, too, have made terrible choices in the recent past.
The President will address the nation today, and will attempt, I imagine, to offer Americans a vision of a man in charge. Many pundits speculate he will also (or should) avail himself of the opportunity to speak frankly about the need for a long-term energy plan that unchains the United States from its big oil addiction and spirits us forward into a clean energy future. It is being billed as his JFK moment, and one of the most critical in his still young presidency. I hope he delivers, but I also hope we, as American citizens, can be honest with ourselves about the choices that need to be made, and face them with courage and determination.
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4th time: See Obama see the oil spill. Hear Obama talk the oil spill. So, what ...
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I think if he had said anything at all he would have "owned" the spill. Maybe he should have asked the Government to put up 20 billion! No...maybe he should have paid for it himself since it was his fault for taking time to think thus letting more oil spill...maybe he should have let them keep drilling, that would have saved the day....well unless there is a bad batch of BOP's and another rig blew up...Or............
For example, what the hell are Anne Thompson's environmental science qualifications for being NBC's 'chief envrionmental correspondent'?
I don't mean to be harsh just on Anne. because all the TV media people are generally just incompetent 'talking heads', but these high flying titles and no real understanding of the existential impact of financial, environmental, political, or war experience is starting to annoy this viewer, and perhaps others who recognize that the MSM is not doing squat to report or provide any hint of value-added analysis of the global corporate/financial/militarists deadly impacts in any of these areas that very certainly spell disaster for all average people.
Bottom-line; the audience is less willing to accept or eat the normal 'dog food' when it has become so clear that our world is going to hell, and the MSM doesn't even have anything intelligent to say.
Just an idea, but how about getting some people who can add some value and actually address the areas they are supposed to be reporting on?
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
That desire did not come from the sky nor did it come from human nature. Our collective desire and our 'need' for fossil fuels to fulfill that desire are constituted by the structure of our political-economic and social lives. Nothing can be done to fix our ecological predicament as long as the people writing about it are unable to see the connection between capitalism and environmental degradation. We can not have, simultaneously, a global social system controlled by capitalist ideology and practice AND a responsible environmental or social policy. The objective processes necessary to sustain a capitalist social system will continue to generate the experience of 'wants' and 'needs' like the one this author identifies (however incomplete her analysis might be). To make any head way towards a responsible and responsive relationship between our global community and our global environment we must be able to envision a truly new, truly radical way to organize ourselves and this particular author leads us down a dark and fruitless path when she suggests the experience of this particular need is something internal to the people experiencing it. The honest choice we have to make is whether or not we can leave the behind world of Capital: the all too mythical and all to real world of private property, profit-seeking and 'rational choice'.
Everyone knew this past election was the last roll of the dice. I love Obama as a person but it has now come up snake eyes with another corporatist from the Ivy League indoctrination boot camps of the Eastern Establishment. This is the money that has run the United States from the first wave of capitalist industrialization in the 1870's. They completely gamed the sacrifice of WWII to create the MIC and their Wall Street bankers. They finally completely undid FDR whom they hated.
It was all prophesied in 1978 in "The Deer Hunter". The film was the great spiritual cultural artifact of the cosmic insights of the 1960's and the revelation of the national spiritual truth of the Vietnam War. I have been trying to warn people all my life but to no avail. So we have now come to the end of the road. We have now come to the suicide of Nicholas. The Suicide of the United States.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gqit3zVmyc”
Sigh.
This is the facet of our mess which I'm studying right now. Studying WWII (1941-45) led to studying the decade before and the decade after. Early MIC was unorganized and more in gestation, really. The military was just being formed. No one wanted to go to war. Then Pearl Harbor, and the industry of war really began in 1942 and went through 1945. War came to an end, but industry had found that war was very profitable. General George C. Marshall, a man of honor, retired in 1945, and then some military of little honor merged with industry, and the real seed of MIC was born. 1948 found Joseph McCarthy creating the hysteria of the "Red Scare." Propaganda methods learned during the war were enhanced and practiced, especially on the new medium--Television. We were doomed from that point on. There were respites in the first decade, but it was growing. On January 17, 1960, Eisenhower had three days left in office, and he made that video warning U.S. citizens of the MIC. I'm sure Ike wanted to be on the historical record as having provided a warning to the people. Propaganda became more sophisticated, and then big money and the media played us like a honkey tonk piano. Such immense world sacrifices in WWII, and then what happened?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gqit3zVmyc
It was all given to the nation of dunces at 24 frames a second in 1978 AND NOBODY LEARNED A THING!
Excellent point!
I'm not against cars (Cadillacs are pretty sensuous), and my husband and I use a motorcycle to get long distances, but I'm so happy that I have no choice but to walk to 90% of my destinations. I don't think we need to eradicate autos entirely, but we do need to find sustainable machines, and we do need to drive less, less, less!!!!
I urge you to do it by 5p on Friday! Shake up the political world and news cycle! give them something to talk about on Sunday other than this speech! Your staff tied you to the BP Blimp! and that is not a good thing. The oil leak cannot be stopped NOW! BP knows it, they just haven't told you yet! they will not tell you tomorrow , Six months from now you will see for yourself. do not WAIT!”
There are rumblings that what has happened is too terrible for them to tell us! The secret is this: There is a rupture in the pipe in the seabed several thousand feet below the 450 ton BOP. This means oil and gas are spewing around the pipe which will eventually cause direct erosion of the seabed all the way up the pipe column on the outside. At some point this will open up an unstable hole in the sea floor and the BOP will collapse into it taking the remaining pipeing structure with it. As the spewing erosion continues it will eventually open up a huge hole and the entire seafloor will collapse all the way down to the previously encased oil deposit lake and 2.5 billion barrels of oil (not gallons!) will be laid bare to boil up into the Gulf of Mexico in TOTAL BLEED OUT. At that point no "relief well" or anything else would work to control this.
I hope and pray that this is not the true situation. If we then dodge this worst case scenario we MUST absolutely RE-THINK EVERYTHING. This would be the uncontrolled Deep Stupidity Horizon China Syndrome. Supposedly a reporter from Mother Jones is working on this story to try to determine if this is, in fact, what is really going on. Does anyone else here have anything on this rumor?
http://standupforournation.blogspot.com/2010/06/well-disintegrating-oil-leaking-from.html
The reason top hat, junk shot, et al failed is because the drill pipe is compromised below the sea floor. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle, when you open up the nozzle it doesn't leak as bad, but close the nozzle and it leaks real bad. This is why BP sawed off the pipe that made the leak worse, to relieve the pressure below.
It's a race between drilling relief wells and the BOP collapsing. It's doubtful that the entire sea floor would collapse, but it doesn't have to for this to go from 50,000 barrels a day to 150,000 barrels.
" i want the president to do this, i want him to be this way ,or that. he didn't do this, he didn't say that"
i had a conversation today with an old timer who probably didn't even vote for Barack Obama, but he said ,
"i don't care what party he belongs to, i don't care what you think.This is the Gulf. all of us, All OF US better get down on our knees and pray for guidance for our president because he will need it, he will need all our prayer and all our help to lead us through this horrible, horrible event."
now I am not a kneeling down, praying Christian like this man, but he echoed my thoughts exactly.
we all cry, oh you must bring us together! oh, you must lead? but doesn't it work the other way? what are we giving? don't we need to come together as a nation in the face of this assault on the lifestream of the gulf? how can we bicker at a time like this?
All of our interests are tied to perseverence in this matter.
. why must every issue become a referendum on how 'good' the president is doing? there is so much to do.
It is too late, manyamile, Judgment Day has come.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gqit3zVmyc
President Obama's reluctance to wrest control of the cleanup operation from BP?
And who is he supposed to hand over the control of the cleanup operation to?
The only nincompoops who believe that believe deepwater offshore oil drilling is worth the environmental repercussions is BP, Exxon Valdez and the "drill, baby, drill" oil loving republicans.
They are the only ones who expend any energy on the subject because they are the only ones who ever promoted the idea that deepwater offshore oil drilling wasn't half-baked and idiotic.
And it's their job as far as I'm concerned to cleanup the mess.
The military hasn't invested one American tax payer dollar on training soldiers to plug an oil leak.
So who on this planet has the ability to plug a deepwater offshore oil leak? The Democratic Party, I suppose a incompetent republican would claim.
Wake up.
Obama knows this is a mess that the billionaire oil industry and their republican waterboys created and it's time for them to demonstrate how incompetent they are when it comes to cleaning up the mess they created.
Obama needs to focus on getting BP to pay for the disaster before they declare bankruptcy and creating clean energy legislation that prevents oil industry/republicans from ever letting this happen again.
If the republican party, cheney/bush or palin/mccain were in charge during this catastrophe...
....there would be U.S. Troops in Venezuela looking for "weapons of mass destruction.
Excellent post! Fanned and faved!