Oooh. Van Jones, alright! So, Van Jones<\/a>\u00a0[1]\u201d to recruit?<\/p>\nWhat to do? Where to turn? Whom to blame? Who unfairly established this strange post-Katrina precedent that the president of all people \u2014 not the mayor, not the governor, not private enterprise \u2014 is ultimately responsible?<\/p>\n
We can all question that unfair premise, and did so in 2005, but critics like Obama himself made the federal response to Katrina a campaign issue. And so here we are with him hoisted with his own petard.<\/p>\n
That old meany goddess Nemesis is at work again, causing havoc nearly in the identical spot as Katrina (but of course) \u2014 focusing on the young technocrat who so loudly blamed the \u201cincompetence\u201d of Bush during the New Orleans mess. Now our Oedipus is reduced to raging in his halls against BP, with thousands of hard-working Louisianans and other Gulfers, the losers for this divine reminder about the wages of\u00a0hubris<\/em>.<\/p>\nGiven the dearth of Obama\u2019s executive experience, and given what we know of community organizing, and in light of what we saw in the 2008 campaign, the president is pretty much acting to script. Readers, you know it well by now and saw it again last night.<\/p>\n
A)\u00a0Talk in soaring hope and change platitudes without saying much of anything<\/em>: no review of the actual mechanisms to close the well; no specific systematic overview of various ways of cleaning up the mess; no references to future contingency plans should present efforts come up short. We are back to the Victory Column or Cairo speech, and have the gasbag Edward Everett Hale at Gettysburg when we needed a concise Lincoln.<\/p>\nB)\u00a0Blaming \u201cthem\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 as in, after 18 months, the Bush moles are still burrowed deeply into the regulatory agencies thwarting hope and change. Apparently it took the BP spill to remind Sec. Salazar and Obama just how ubiquitous the Bush incompetents and rascals were in their midst. Somehow Halliburton will find its way into the narrative (if it has not already). We get the script: each time Obama screws up, a new discovery is made that a Bushite was in deep cover and only now is found out.<\/p>\nC)\u00a0Sue<\/em>! Well before the oil stops, we are interested instead on how to punish BP. But this is the proverbial cart before the horse. There is plenty of time to force BP to cough up punitive damages; but one does not demonize the company who is, for better or worse, trying to clean up as the oil pours out. (This reminds me of a farmer who stood screaming over his son and his friends in a packing house yard. The boy in reckless fashion has flipped a truck with eight pallets of Santa Rosa plums on it. As thousands of plums were rolling over the asphalt, instead of organizing a pick-up, the irate dad kept screaming reminders to the son exactly how much he had lost and how he was going to have to come up with thousands of dollars in restitution (the son, of course, did not work too hard with his friends in finding salvageable fruit on the tarmac and repacking what he could).<\/p>\nAdd in the British pique at having Obama call out \u201cBritish Petroleum\u201d (officially is it not \u201cBeyond Petroleum\u201d?) in tones that suggest a sort of 1812 raid on the White House (in the context of the gift-giving mess, the bust fiasco, the Brown slap downs, the neutrality on the Falklands, the put down about the \u201cspecial relationship,\u201d and on and on, all reminding the British that they are getting the Israel treatment).<\/p>\n
D) \u201cNever miss a crisis<\/em>.\u201d Let me get this straight: as oil gushes forth, we are to use this disaster as a teachable moment to go the wind and solar route. OK, but fairly or not, the message to the shrimpers and hotel owners of the Gulf is: \u201cYour misery has some didactic value for the rest of us, since after your Gulf is destroyed, we will shut down your rigs to ensure permanent poverty follows your misery.\u201d<\/p>\nIf the president is going to try to manipulate a crisis, at least get the manipulation right: we should fast-track nuclear power to produce clean electricity to fuel a new generation of hybrid engines and electric motors; and we also should fast-track natural gas distribution to capitalize on new natural gas finds to power trucks, tractors, and large engines not suitable for hybridization with present technology; and we should exploit oil as a transition fuel wherever it can be more safely recovered (e.g., ANWR) without going 5,000 feet to get it.<\/p>\n
But in general, an oil spill is a bad occasion for windmill wonkery. (Obama if filling in here: Al Gore\u2019s domestic problems and his move to Oprah country have combined to silence him for a bit during the disaster.)<\/p>\n
E)\u00a0Straw men<\/em>. Even the \u201csome say\u201d and \u201cothers say\u201d got in there. Who says what and why? And the vague stuff about \u201cwe don\u2019t know how precisely to get there\u201d is like Patton telling the Third Army that they will reach Berlin some day but have no idea where the Rhine is or how precisely they will get across. In an odd, unhappy way, the president physically seemed to shrink behind the Oval Office desk. It almost looked as if a teenager were in the presidential seat trying to peep above the rim of the desk. Another cardigan sweater Carter moment.<\/p>\nThe Political Mess<\/strong><\/p>\nThe BP spill is a nightmare for Obama for a variety of reasons. Let us count them, without delighting in his dilemma, given that we all are in a bad fix, since the spill is ruining an entire regional economy and the wild reaction to it threatens 20% of our oil supply.<\/p>\n
Obama campaigned on competence and cool. But his technocrats, whether Van Jones, Dr. Chu, Larry Summers, or Eric Holder, are at best academic misfits and at worse simply unfit for executive responsibilities.\u00a0Harvard Law Review<\/em>\u00a0may be of value for suing BP later and demonizing it in the press, and community organizing may be valuable in shaking down BP to clean up, but had only the president run an ACE Hardware store, or at least worked the night shift at Starbucks, he could have had some experience in delegating authority and demanding results from employees, while keeping in mind the bigger picture of economic survival. Right now we are being governed by a GS something, who has no idea where money comes from, but lots of ideas how to blow it. This crisis brings that out.<\/p>\nThe left is restless. The shelf life of forbearance is ending. Obama so far has benefited from the liberal desire for power that has trumped even its own green advocacy. (Bush would have been cannibalized for this second one). But at some point, the pictures from the Gulf of dying birds, of oily beaches, of sticky fish will sink polls and so get even to the Malibu crowd. And after they scream at Bush, BP, Palin,\u00a0hoi polloi<\/em>\u00a0for driving Yukons (instead of Lexus and Volvo SUVs), they are only left with Obama to blame.<\/p>\nThe spill is a foreign relations metaphor and a dangerous one at that. Right now, Hamas, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, the Taliban, Turkey, Venezuela, and a host of others are testing us, three-quarters of them convinced (after 18 months of good evidence) that Obama either will not or cannot or knows not how to deter them all from making regional \u201cadjustments.\u201d When they see his polls fall during the Gulf crisis, and his tepid reaction to it, they by extension ponder whether another Gaza flotilla, another sinking South Korean ship, another Taliban offensive, another Syrian-Hezbollah missile sale, another slap at Eastern Europe, or another border incursion into Colombia might win the same sort of speech that we saw last night.<\/p>\n
Add in the domestic turmoil over the bloody healthcare debate, the annual two-trillion-dollar deficits, the cap-and-trade and amnesty fights to come, and our enemies see opportunity as never before. (Note how Hezbollah prompted a July 2006 war with Israel, sensing a weakened George Bush \u2014 when his polls hit rock bottom, a midterm corrective election was coming up, and debate over the surge was tearing apart the country.)<\/p>\n
Who is advising Obama? Are they afraid to tell the boss that hopey\/changey is now stale and past expiration date \u2014 or do they sense that if they withdraw it from the shelf there is nothing to restock it with? Surely, there must be some sort of panic going on that they have an empty Armani suit?<\/p>\n
A Final Media Note<\/strong><\/p>\nMuch has been made that the MSNBC and left-wing punditry crowd are turning on Obama, especially after last night\u2019s non-speech. Sorry, I don\u2019t quite believe they adjudicate Obama on competency, since the spill speech was no worse than the pathetic \u201cI could no more disown Rev. Wright\u201d riff of yesteryear, one that gave them a collective tingle.<\/p>\n
Instead, Obama is now 42% to 48% in most polls, not soaring to 65% or demolishing Hillary. In other words, if right now Obama were still beloved, his former hagiographers would find a way to turn his Gulf performance into another \u2018\u201dI wasn\u2019t there all that much at Trinity\u201d excuse. But Obama, whom they all so invested in, is the most polarizing figure since Nixon, and has the unique ability to destroy liberalism for a generation: lose the House and maybe even the Senate; turn the public off on government, divide the country over healthcare, cap-and-trade, race, and amnesty; and completely discredit a shamelessly partisan media.<\/p>\n
No, the sudden damning of Obama\u2019s leadership is a symptom that Obama is turning radioactive, and not even Chris Matthews wants to be the last zealot in Washington crafting yet another narrative of how brilliant and tingly a soon-to-be 30% president \u201creally\u201d is.<\/p>\n
In a weird way, the green issue is a gift from the gods for the liberal media: it allows them \u201con principle\u201d (cf. Maureen Dowd) to distance themselves from Obama (as in \u201cwe don\u2019t compromise with the environment\u201d when, in fact, they compromise on everything from Predator assassinations, windmills off Martha\u2019s Vineyard, solar panels in tortoise country, Guantanamo, etc. as long as there is power to be had or amplified).
\nBut again, oil in the Gulf, like blood in the water, suddenly makes it \u201cprincipled\u201d for an opportunistic shark to take a bite out of a bleeding and floundering Obamafish.<\/p>\n
\nURLs in this post:<\/p>\n
[1] Oooh. Van Jones, alright! So, Van Jones: http:\/\/corner.nationalreview.com\/post\/?q=YjJkZmU1YjRiZTdjNWQxY2NmOGExMGRiNjIxZTg3MWQ=<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Man-made Disasters The president recently addressed the nation on the oil slick, nearly two months into the disaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[587],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-p1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":877,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/faith-based-energy-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1551,"position":0},"title":"Faith-Based Energy Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When the summer driving season starts soon, and tension heats up over Iran, gas may reach $5 a gallon. Nothing bothers voters more than paying an extra $20 or $30 every time they fill up. In times like these, they soon might prefer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3451,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/caught-in-the-middle-east-minefield\/","url_meta":{"origin":1551,"position":1},"title":"Caught in the Middle East Minefield","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services America seems trapped in an exploding Middle East minefield. Revolts are breaking out amid the choke points of world commerce. Shiite populations are now restive in the Gulf monarchies. Not far away, Iran's youth are sick and tired of the country's seventh-century theocracy.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Foreign Policy"","block_context":{"text":"Foreign Policy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/foreign-policy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":887,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-gasoline-nightmare\/","url_meta":{"origin":1551,"position":2},"title":"A Gasoline Nightmare","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Obama is barnstorming the west \u2014 blasting oil companies, trying to convince voters that he supports an \u201call of the above\u201d policy, and reminding them that drilling has increased since his tenure. But that won\u2019t work for five reasons. 1) No one believes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1329,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/oil-rich-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":1551,"position":3},"title":"Oil-Rich America?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is a revolution going on in America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests. Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1567,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/katrinization\/","url_meta":{"origin":1551,"position":4},"title":"Katrinization","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner There has been a lot of noise about the oil plume and the proper responsibility of government, but the real lesson is that, during Bush\u2019s two terms, the media began to hold presidents culpable for many things that used to be attributed to tragedy,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2010"","block_context":{"text":"June 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/june-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10113,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/apocalyptic-progressivism\/","url_meta":{"origin":1551,"position":5},"title":"Apocalyptic Progressivism","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Instead of overcoming challenges, progressive politicians exploit them to expand government. 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