With polls showing the public view of the government’s response to the BP spill as worse than Bush’s response to Katrina and liberals criticizing Obama for not being “more angry” in public, the White House has moved to close the anger gap. Today, Obama is pledging to find an “ass to kick.”
James Carville has publicly attacked the President for his lack of response to the spill. Other friends like Spike Lee have also criticized Obama as being too passive and advised him to publicly “go off” on BP. Bill Maher added “I thought when we elected a black president, we were going to get a black president.”
It appears that the White House is listening and sent out the President to go medieval on someone before polls reach irreversible levels. In his most recent interview, Obama stated “I don’t sit around just 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.”
This is either a new public stance on the oil spill or the final confirmation of a long rumored bias in the White House against the gentle creatures of Equus africanus asinus. [By the way, there are people in places like Henderson, Texas with a large number of asses to kick].
Of course, with the donkey as the symbol of his own party, the comment could be more prophetic than intended given polls showing a resurgence of the GOP.
I do not happen to be one of those critical of the President for a lack of shouting and posturing — though I do find his overall response to be overall poor. This reminds me of Michael Dukakis being criticized for not pounding the table after a remarkably moronic question from Bernard Shaw about his wife being raped. There is room to criticize Obama for his delay in going down to the Gulf and relatively few visits to the area — as well as the overall weak governmental response. However, I do not need a Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the desk to satisfy my inner angry self.
Even if you wanted more emotion, this type of comment would have been more powerful if you didn’t get the feeling that Axelrod is holding up a board reading “More Anger.”
CM,
Thanks for reminding me why I like Australians. 😀
While I agree that the government’s response to this disaster was slow going from the get-go, I don’t get why people are in such a snit about Obama’s lack of emotion. I also don’t get how this can be considered Obama’s “Katrina.” The Bush Admin’s lack of a sense of urgency resulted in the death of thousands of people, and the decimation of a city, its people and their livelihoods, many of which are still feeling the lack of the governments response. This has, and will continue to have, a huge impact on the environment and people’s livelihoods, but realistically, just short of Obama putting on scuba gear and going to the site himself, what more could his administration have done? I agree that he shouldn’t have relied so heavily on BP’s “experts” from the start, but, since this is BP’s business, I would think since they know how to start the flow of oil, they’d damned sure know how to stop it.
And, I must agree with BIL – the fault lies directly with those who constructed the rig, owned the rig, and who leased the rig. I also feel that Ken Salazar bears some responsibility as well, as it appears he didn’t do much to curb corruption in the MMS, which also has fault written all over it.
That said, I’d rather have a president who is calm under pressure, thinks before he acts, listens to all sides before making a decision, and doesn’t have a knee-jerk reaction to every crisis, and doesn’t find the need to put forth chest-thumping, fake bravado. Give me brains over brawn any day of the week.
Kucinich did not run in 2000. I liked him back then in any case.
I liked Kucinich in 2000 and 2004. I don’t think he is the answer now but at least you are throwing a name out there Buddah.
Kind of off topic,but interesting:
06/04/10 @ 19:20
Suddenly, Republicans want an active federal government
By John Farmer
June 06, 2010, 6:15AM
For a while there it seemed we were going to be treated to a real debate over the proper size of the federal government, especially how big a role it should have in the national economy. It’s long overdue.
Everyone understood that Democrats (or most of them) want an activist, expansionist federal government capable of tackling everything from teenage acne to nuclear Armageddon. Likewise, it was widely accepted that Republicans (just about all of them) want to reduce government to a permanent vegetative state. Their differences provided a reassuring sense of certainty — the feeling that no matter how volatile the times, some things never change.
But that’s all fallen apart in recent days.
As problems pile up — unemployment, a weak economy, oil in the Gulf of Mexico, a deteriorating Arab-Israeli situation — Republicans are suddenly tripping over each other in the rush to demand not less federal intervention, but more.
Who’d have guessed it? Especially after watching for a year and a half as Republicans stamped their feet and held their breath (and their votes as well) whenever the Obama administration tried to tackle any problem. Now that’s all changed, it seems.
The oil flood in the Gulf provides the most dramatic case in point. Before the BP derrick took a swan dive, Republicans were adamant about two things: first, that government keep its regulatory hands off the oil industry and, second, that it should stop blocking the drilling for oil off the coasts. All of them — East, West and Gulf, plus Alaska.
Remember “drill, baby drill?” It was the mantra of the 2008 Republican National Convention.
That was then. Now the GOP is in full cry demanding the federales step in, take charge, halt all such drilling and immediately stem the oil flood — as if it could. Only BP and the oil giants have the technology and know-how to handle the crisis. But Republicans, after decades of coddling the oil industry and celebrating its technical skills, have lost faith in their old favorite.
(AP File Photo)Sarah PalinHow soon they forget. Especially Sarah Palin. Palin, the Barbie doll of American politics, actually attacked President Obama the other day for permitting offshore drilling, only to have television replay her shouted demands — several times — for drilling on land and sea. (A woman’s privilege to change her mind?)
Job creation is yet another example of how events have tripped up the Grand Old Partisans.
It’s been received wisdom among Republicans for decades that government doesn’t create jobs, only private enterprise creates jobs. Remember that one?
They’re correct of course; the private sector, not the federal government, is the real job engine. But that’s an inconvenient idea politically at the moment. So Republicans are busy berating the Obama administration for — brace yourself — not doing enough to create jobs.
It’s true. Washington hasn’t done enough to gin up the job market. But that’s largely because Congressional Republicans (and some Democrats) oppose providing more of the kind of stimulus money that took some of the early sting out of the Great Recession.
The demand for a larger presidential role is not limited to domestic problems. Republicans are insisting Obama crack down on Iran and North Korea, but don’t say how that’s possible without significant international cooperation, currently nonexistent. War maybe? And he damn well better solve that Arab-Israeli thing soon, too.
The need to switch tactics from denying Obama authority to do much of anything — nullifying the 2008 election, in effect — to demanding he do everything has driven some Republicans ’round the bend. Sen. John McCain, desperate to save his Arizona Senate seat, went so far as to blame Obama for the ill-advised Israeli decision to board relief ships bound for Gaza. Now where’d he get that one?
We’re in a new political environment driven by a spreading sense of national powerlessness. Thus the new Republican demand that Obama act presidential, even that he “take charge,” whether in the Gulf or on jobs.
They’ve got it right, finally.
The question is, what took them so long?
Speaking as a professional intellectual myself, the problem is not that Obama is intellectualizing the spill, the problem is that Obama is apparently protecting BP.
It is a lie to say BP has us over a barrel. We have millions (literally) of people working for the government, many of them have senior management experience in the oil industry. The US can take BP into receivership and use its resources however it chooses to do that, including its engineers, and it can pay an entire panel of retired managers from Exxon or other oil companies to be in charge of that operation. We have dozens of professors that TAUGHT this stuff to the BP petroleum and drilling engineers, they would be happy to drop what they are doing and help out, just for the promise of insignificant amounts of NSF funding. We have a wide variety of options, here, and one of them is forcing Hayward and the other top managers aside and seizing their ships and resources to use as we wish until this crisis is over. Hell, even if we just push Hayward aside and have his managers answer to Salazar or Obama, we’d be better off.
It seems clear to me this crisis is following the standard model. Lots of anger from politicians to get them on TV, promises of breathtaking punishment of the guilty, and as soon as the cameras are turned off a complete erosion of all of that. But make no mistake, we will have a passed bill with a great Orwellian name, “Offshore Oil Punishment Statute” (OOPS) or something like that. It just won’t really DO anything. Hell, Obama cannot even stop the new licensing for offshore drilling RIGHT NOW, and it only promises to supply perhaps 1% of our needs. If we can’t do that NOW, while black crude is washing up on white sand beaches, how in the world can we expect anything to happen once the cameras are off and Rachel Maddow has to move on to covering something else?
The promises to fix Bush’s mistakes are broken. The promise to fix healthcare insurance is unkept. I contributed to Obama and voted for him in the primary and general. I was conned, he is a liar, a corporatist wolf in populist clothing.
Maybe Obama should declare some BP executives to be terrorists and have them assassinated by a CIA drone.
Kucinich 2012
Kick some ass?
Start by putting BP into receivership, President Purchased. Then go after the guys you should have gone after in the first place – the guys who did the faulty work that led to this disaster – the fraudulent criminal enterprise of our former VP, Halliburton Cheney. (While you’re at it, arrest Cheney for treason, you spineless corporatist toady.) Follow by arresting Halliburton’s and BP’s CEOs and those underlings criminally responsible for avoiding appropriate safety measures in the first place. Put them on trial. When a guilty verdict is returned, put them in prison for X years with no parole. In a real prison too, not a country club. Place strict safety measures on drilling followed by inspections. If you don’t want to do it right? Then you don’t get to drill at all and some other compliant organization will come along and take their place in the market. Period.
It’s not rocket science.
Get to work.
I don’t think Obama thinks like a populist. Edwards was the populist in that race. People perceived Obama to be a populist.
Obama was not a populist?!
I see the oil has gotten to your head already…
Or Henry Hams.
If we’d only known this was in our future, we could have all voted for Sen. McCain.
Now there’s a guy than can show anger!
Obama, soma bin laden. Translates to Obama on of the same. It is time to put the smoke and mirrors created in the Ronald years and perfected in the Clinton years away. It is time for action. If it takes, taking control of BP NA and placing them in receivership then so be it.
Then Hugo can say that we own Oil Company’s as well. If you stop and think, if they did not pay their taxes, they would be taken over by the Government. In reality, how can you say that you really own anything? You just have a better right to have and use it…..
I like James Carville, but his emotions overcame his brain when he criticized the president. I’m not sure that Pres. Obama has the ability to get down and dirty with his anger, and if you can’t pull it off properly, it comes across as the sort of cheap pandering that it actually is.
My father, who was a lifelong Democrat, told me many years ago that he had always regretted not voting for Adlai Stevenson, but that he had shared the general perception that Stevenson was too intellectual and aloof to connect with average people. Perhaps Pres. Obama has the same problem. Passion isn’t like shorthand; it can’t be taught. But kickin’ ass and taking names will not compensate for the economic losses or for the long-term environmental disaster BP has created. My preference is for someone who thinks before speaking and approaches problems in ways that make sense.
KF I think you are right. The credit card vote was a red flag. Obama has never been a populist. Being a populist is not necessarily a good thing although it can be.
There’s never been anything “populist” about Obama. A creature of the banks early in his carreer, he voted with the credit card companies in revamping bankruptcy laws, then as President voted with the banks to bail them out with no strings, next ratcheted up the doomed war in Afghanistan, then signed the biggest defense authorization bill ever.
I’d worry about my own behind if I were you, Bill Maher is spot-on…
Yes, we can…. but no, we won’t.
Going medieval on BP would be counterproductive to getting the leak stopped. Like it or not, BP is essential in stopping the leak. BP has us over a barrel.
Obama suffers from the same problem that most intellectuals suffer from, namely, a belief that the rest of the Country always wants a measured, thoughtful response to a crisis. For all his failings, Bush II understood the basic rule of statecraft that is essentially, when the circumstances call for it, you must be pissed off – and show it. It was Churchill’s raison d’être and the essence of his legacy as a strong leader. At some point, the “Populist President” must actually be populist. The problem is, it is contrary to his nature.