Hugh Hewitt: Obama's 2 percent solution for the Louisiana oil spill crisis
By: Hugh Hewitt
Examiner Columnist
June 1, 2010
Louisiana's Sen. David Vitter is angry. Very angry. And he should be.
On May 11, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal requested emergency dredging and berm-building to protect his state's fragile coastal wetlands and barrier islands from the spreading oil slick.
After weeks of delay, and only after Jake Tapper's press conference question to President Obama last week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency approved part of the plan -- 2 percent of the plan, to be specific.
"Here, the president doesn't seem to have a clue," Vitter told Houma Today. "His decision on the emergency dredging barrier-island plan is a thinly veiled 'no.' Approving 2 percent of the request and kicking the rest months down the road is outrageous, absolutely outrageous."
Outrageous but consistent with a president practicing policy-by-paralysis. Obama is so afraid of doing the wrong thing, he isn't doing anything except retailing stories of his daughter's concern over the disaster.
"There are really only two options here for the federal government -- either the sand boom works or it doesn't. We already know it does. We have seen it work," Jindal is quoted as saying by Houma Today. "If it does, they need to move quickly on getting BP to pay for all the other segments in our plan -- just as they said they will do for this first segment.
We want our entire sand boom coastal-protection plan approved, and we are continuing to ask the federal government and BP to approve this plan."
Houma Today's Nikki Buskey has provided the best coverage to date of the permitting paralysis gripping Team Obama, but the mainstream media will catch up with the story eventually, just as it finally figured out that the president's schedule of fundraisers and vacations wasn't what the public expected in the middle of a crisis. As details emerge of the unexplainable delays and stonewalling of the obviously necessary berms, more questions will be asked about why the delays occurred.
Unlike the immediate aftermath of the explosion itself, the halting, incoherent nature of the federal reactions reflect the president's own management style and his refusal to push the bureaucrats working for him to take actions outside of their paper-thick comfort zones.
"What, no EIR? No interagency consultation? What about a Section 7 with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?" -- these are the rote responses of a bureaucracy receiving no leadership from the Oval Office, even though the spill itself represents the ultimate futility of paper-driven environmentalism.
Incredibly, the president's team has cited the fear that too many berms would alter tidal movements, as though that theoretical worry trumps the very real oil headed toward shore. Bureaucrats also mumbled that too many berms might just shift the oil toward Mississippi --without explaining why berms couldn't be built there, and without making any judgment over which part of the Gulf Coast shoreline is most fragile and thus most deserving of protection.
The story of the berms permit and the president's ineptitude will be the focus of intense scrutiny for years, and if the 2 percent works, the weeks of delay before that beginning was allowed and the delay before the 98 percent followed will be a stain on the Obama presidency that lasts longer than the oil on the shore.
Which is one very powerful reason why Team Obama may be dragging its collective feet: They aren't afraid it won't work. They are scared to death it will, and that their incompetence in authorizing the effort will be as clear as the oceans around the ruptured pipe are dark.
Examiner columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at www.hughHewitt.com
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