I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling severely underwhelmed by President Obama’s flaccid response to the Gulf oil spill. He took advantage of a prime opportunity – speaking from the Oval Office – and wasted it by saying exactly what he’d been saying all along. There was no plan, no decisiveness. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything at all.
A recent poll stated that half of Louisianans think President Bush did a better job with Hurricane Katrina than Obama is doing with the oil spill. While Bush’s response wasn’t perfect, so far Obama hasn’t done much more than sit around with “experts from academia” who provided “ideas and advice,” not action. He exploited the disaster for a potentially approval-boosting photo op, snapped collecting tar balls on a Louisiana beach. Obama said, “The one approach I will not accept is inaction.” But 58 days after the spill, still nothing definitive has been done.
Obama has been spoiled by the Left-dominated Congress, sitting back and letting them carry out his agenda for him. This oil spill is the first time he actually has to act for himself. And he’s floundering under the pressure.
The speech was full of hyperbolizing (the worst environmental disaster ever?), demonizing BP, and reiterating lifeless promises. (And by the way, Mr. President, you don’t need to punctuate every single syllable with a gesture. We get it. You’re angry. You already illustrated that by kicking your rhetoric up a notch. By the way, how’s that ass-kicking coming?)
And after all that, Obama only met with BP for 20 minutes this morning – just enough time for another photo op.
I’ll give him some credit. He tried. And this time, his emotions seemed sincere. He wrapped up the 17-minute speech with an uplifting, religious hope (real hope, not Hopey-Changey hope) almost Reaganesque in texture. Obama gives the appearance of having everything under control… Now let’s see if he really does.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
EP, I wish I could be half as optimistic as you are regarding the performance from the president. I sometimes wonder is it just he doesn't know what he is doing or is he really okay with the destruction that results from his boneheaded policy initiatives or in this case, lack of action and out and out obstructionism.
ReplyDeleteI think he knows what he is doing. I think the delay in response, the continued delay in helping to fix the problem, is calculated as being useful to him - politically.
Did you catch the Rudy Giuliani clip that Jill had up over at Pundit and Pundette? It was on the money. That hack Mika can schill for this guy all she wants, it doesn't cut it, either as a defense for the president or for herself as a valid news person.
The whole thing the president is up to here is sickening me.