Vatican Observer

“He’s been acting a little like a Vatican observer here. When is he actually going to do something? And I worry; I know he doesn’t want to take ownership of it. I know politics. He said the minute he says, ‘I’m in charge,’ he takes the blame, but somebody has to. It’s in our interest.” ~ Chris Matthews on Obama’s response to the Gulf oil spill disaster.

Last night President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office to say that the BP’s contamination of the Gulf of Mexico is, well, a bad thing. But all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would be working hard to rectify the situation. Nobel prize winners. Scientists. Important people.

Jason Linkins rightly asks in “Obama’s Oil Spill Speech: What Was the Point?” ” were you looking for something that resembled a fully-realized action plan, describing a detailed approach to containment and clean up? Or perhaps a definitive statement, severing the command and control that BP has largely enjoyed, in favor of a structured, centralized federal response? Maybe you were looking for a roadmap-slash-timetable for putting America on a path to a clean energy future? Well, this speech was none of those things.”

This arm’s length treatment of the BP assault on our shores is really quite frightening. And as Robert Reich so ably stated in his column last week: “the administration has not used legal authority to order BP to do a thing, because it hasn’t asserted any legal authority.” Instead, this administration is sitting in the balcony like a Vatican observer, powerless by choice, scanning the horizon for smoke. In the public galleries below, the “small people” are searching for answers, too. But any visibility they might have of the disaster unfolding has been tightly controlled by the very perpetrators of the catastrophe! And the one entity that could and should protect the role of the fourth estate as watchdog, our federal government, is noticeably silent on the matter.

There will have to be a point when we are willing to admit that perhaps BP is not working in the best interests of the people impacted by this contamination of the Gulf of Mexico, but in the interests of the shareholders they serve. And their interest, I believe, is to let it flow until a relief well can be put in place. I can think of no other reason to excuse this level of incompetence and unwillingness to accept assistance from other nations, other oil companies (and the containment and collection ships they have offered to send) and experts in the field. There has to be a point when we will sever the “command and control that BP has largely enjoyed” at the expense of our environment. I had hoped that moment would have been last night.

Tagged as: BP Contamination, Gulf of Mexico, Obama, Svanberg