Posted on 06/15/2010 8:58:09 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On the 54th day of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama projected that the transformational impacts of the oil spill will be as fundamentally world-changing as those of 9/11. He's overreaching on that one.
The jets that sliced into the World Trade Center pushed America, indeed the globe, into recognizing that the U.S. was a nation upon which a maniacal enemy had declared war.
There could have been no greater shock, no deeper sorrow, no more searing anger and no more steely resolve than flowered in an awakening to a clash of civilizations. However differently Americans came to respond in time, they discovered in the passage from Sept. 10 to Sept. 12 that very basic assumptions about life had been wrong.
The lessons of the undersea gusher and its terrible environmental toll are hardly of the same eye-opening, galvanizing order.
Everyone already knew that fossil fuels make the global economy go and are critical to the U.S. standard of living.
Everyone already knew that energy consumption, whether produced by oil, coal, natural gas or nuclear reaction, entails environmental costs.
Everyone already knew that, much as everyone would like to, no one has as yet figured out how to economically harness alternative, clean energy sources like wind and solar power - particularly not for transportation fuel.
What everyone did not know was how risky deepwater drilling was, how shoddy the safety standards were on at least one rig and how ill-prepared the oil industry is both to stanch the flow and to minimize topside damage.
Nor did anyone know how far short Obama would fall from American expectations of presidential leadership.
The President kept such a distance that on Day 37, he felt compelled to declare: "The federal government is fully engaged, and I'm fully engaged."
On Day 48, Obama got colloquially tougher: "I don't sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."
On Day 54, the President invoked the terror attack, stating: "In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, indelibly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.
"And one of the biggest leadership challenges for me going forward is going to be to make sure that we draw the right lessons from this disaster and that we move forward in a bold way in a direction that finally gives us the kind of future-oriented - or the kind of visionary energy policy that we so vitally need and has been absent for so long."
And tonight, on Day 56, after returning from his fourth trip to the gulf region, the President is scheduled to address the nation from the Oval Office, delivering his first talk there, as a way to emphasize the gravity of his interest.
Much has been made of Obama's politically costly remoteness in the face of the crisis. The airwaves have been filled with cries that he needed to express the national fury - thus his awkwardly unpresidential promise to identify targets for butt-kicking.
And now, with some polling under his belt, Obama appears headed toward trying to leverage the disaster into a large-scale energy policy overhaul - thus his badly misplaced reference to the fallout from 9/11.
He should stick to the purpose at hand, and that is to have command, not just the appearance of command, over the drive to stem the flow of oil, to minimize damage to shorelines and to protect taxpayers from a penny's worth of cleanup costs.
While no one expects a miracle, America wants confidence that its President has a handle on the enormously difficult engineering challenges of taming a gusher a mile below the sea and is ensuring the most effective deployment of manpower and technology to minimize the awful damage.
The country wants action, not talk. And everything else can wait.
And say what you will about Bubba, he sure could plug holes.
He couldn’t lead a fly to a turd.
Hell, all this catastrophe is doing is giving this capitalist-hating fascist a platform to push his agenda to destroy the American economy. Hence...we are so screwed.
It’s his way of flying a Jumbo Jet over NY again, without actually using the jumbo jet this time.
Unless...
the goal is not to solve the problem but to use it as a tool to get something greater.
For that it may still not be leadership, but it is initiative.
“Obama does have experience with wieners”.
...why do you think he’s called “O”? It’s the shape him purple lips are usually in.
No dumb@ss, the biggest challenge you face is plugging the hole and cleaning up the mess!
If you are too incompetent to help out with the spill, why do you think we should trust your ability to draw the "right lessons."
Here's some good advice for a bloviating lecturer like you, Obama...why don't you plug your own pie-hole! We don't need anymore of your "teachable moments."
“Nor did anyone know how far short Obama would fall from American expectations of presidential leadership”
Well, I did. And if the American Press had done their proper homework, others would have too.
This is very big. The Daily News has been super Obama loving, and very left in it’s political views. I won’t read it. The rats are jumping ship.
I did.
I love these sayings. One of my favorites used to be "useless as t*ts on a bull. Then a few years back we hired a secretary whose last name was "Bull." Suffice it to say that nature was very kind to her in the endowment department. Sadly, I have had to retire "useless at t*ts on a bull" from my repertoire.
First and foremost, that's his job. And in the last 8 weeks, he has taken no action whatsoever to achieve that end.
I hear there is a party at the White Hut tonight. They have a pirogue full of iced down Chinese prawns and oysters on the half shell for appetizers.
All hat, no cattle.
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