In Sunday's Washington Examiner, Michael Barone criticized Obama's anti-BP "thuggery" in an anti-government screed filled with gross distortions of the government response and sympathy for BP, the apparent real victims of this disaster.
Thuggery is unattractive. Ineffective thuggery even more so. Which may be one reason so many Americans have been reacting negatively to the response of Barack Obama and his administration to BP's Gulf oil spill.
Take Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's remark that he would keep his "boot on the neck" of BP, which brings to mind George Orwell's definition of totalitarianism as "a boot stamping on a human face -- forever." Except that Salazar's boot hasn't gotten much in the way of results yet.
Or consider Obama's undoubtedly carefully considered statement to Matt Lauer that he was consulting with experts "so I know whose ass to kick." Attacking others is a standard campaign tactic when you're in political trouble, and certainly BP, which appears to have taken unwise shortcuts in the Gulf, is an attractive target.
It's interesting that the taking of "unwise shortcuts" is Barone's only mention (and a very diplomatic one at that) of potential wrongdoing by the companies responsible for this catastrophe, while hundreds of words are dedicated to flimsy complaints about the government response. His conflation of a corporation with the human face in Orwell's famous metaphor is also troubling, but certainly not surprising.
While polls have shown that Americans haven't been satisfied with Obama's response to the Gulf oil spill, it certainly has not been because the administration has been too tough on BP. In a June 11-13 Gallup poll, 71 percent of Americans think Obama needs to be tougher on BP, and 59 percent think BP should have to pay for all financial losses resulting from the spill, even if it goes out of business. Only three percent of Americans believe Obama is being too tough on the oil giant. So much for thuggery.
Barone then moves on to the manufactured right-wing outrage over the Interior Department report that recommended a six-month moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf.
The justification offered was an Interior Department report supposedly "peer reviewed" by "experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering." But it turned out the drafts the experts saw didn't include any recommendation for a moratorium. Eight of the cited experts have said they oppose the moratorium as more economically devastating than the oil spill and "counterproductive" to safety.
First, the report clearly states that "draft recommendations" were shown to the experts. These include more than 20 other recommendations made in the report.
Second, much of the argument made by some of the experts hinges on their view that a moratorium "will have a lasting impact on the nation's economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill." That is a perfectly legitimate view for them to hold, but they were consulted with for their engineering expertise, not for their personal opinions on the potential economic effects of a moratorium.
Third, of the eight experts who wrote the letter, three (Kenneth E. Arnold, Dr. E.G. (Skip) Ward, and Thomas E. Williams) weren't even in the group listed as reviewing draft recommendations. They were included in a completely different section of consultants.
Another recent right-wing hobbyhorse is up next, as Barone wonders why the administration has not waived a 1920 law called the Jones Act.
And what about the decision not to waive the Jones Act, which bars foreign-flag vessels from coming to the aid of the Gulf cleanup? The Bush administration promptly waived it after Katrina in 2005. The Obama administration hasn't and claims unconvincingly that, gee, there aren't really any foreign vessels that could help.
The Unified Command has responded that in actuality, "15 foreign-flagged vessels are involved" in the cleanup operations in the Gulf and "none of these vessels have required such a waiver." The press release notes that "even if the Jones Act applies, a foreign flagged vessel can still conduct certain planned operations as part of the BP oil spill response if the vessel is an oil spill response vessel and meets the requirements of 46 USC § 55113." If individual waivers are requested, they would be routed "through the Federal On-Scene Coordinator, who will forward requests immediately through the National Incident Commander for expedited clearance."
Even if the Act applied, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who introduced the Senate bill asking for a blanket waiver of the Jones Act, admitted in a floor speech that the Act only covers areas within three miles of the coastline. The Deepwater Horizon explosion took place 40 miles from the Louisiana coast, leaving 93 percent of the area between the explosion and the coast outside of the range protected by the Jones Act. And as far as Bush waiving the Jones Act following Katrina, Mother Jones reports that it is unclear that the waiver actually helped relief efforts and may in fact have simply been a gift from Bush to the oil industry.
Continuing his departure from reality, Barone complains about the administration's "decision to deny Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's proposal to deploy barges to skim oil from the Gulf's surface." The Coast Guard temporarily stopped some of the barges because they had not been properly inspected for safety equipment, but after cooperation from the White House, they were allowed to continue. Barone provides his readers with no indication that this was only a temporary issue and leaves them with the impression that the barges are still stranded, helplessly waiting for life preservers to make their way through a maze of red tape and bureaucracy, even though the Coast Guard let the barges go days before his article was written. Furthermore, how can anyone have so little awareness as to complain about making sure easily remedied safety regulations are being followed while reporting on a disaster that resulted from safety concerns not being addressed?
Barone's failure to provide necessary context with these accusations and his slipshod presentation of the information he does give shows that he isn't really interested in informing his readers, just trying to deflect blame away from the corporations responsible for the disaster and towards the bogeyman of big government. The amount of self-deception and/or ignorance necessary to maintain the narrative Barone is trying to present is telling; maybe that's why only three percent of the country agrees with him that BP is getting off too easy.