Obama's Katrina
IBD Editorials
Posted 05/03/2010 06:31 PM ET
Media Bias: As the Gulf Coast faced ecological disaster, the president yukked it up with White House correspondents. His Saturday radio address didn't even mention the oil spill. President Bush, call your office.
Rarely has media sycophancy been on such sharp display as in the largely indifferent response to President Obama's own indifference to the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The coverage has been far different from that given to President Bush's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The White House announced Saturday morning that Obama would head to the Gulf Coast on Sunday, just a day after saying he would not go. During a brief visit Sunday to Louisiana, nearly two weeks after disaster beckoned, Obama said: "I'm not going to rest ... or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source (and) the oil on the Gulf is contained." It was about time.
Eleven oil rig workers are missing and presumed dead in the blast. A mention of them and their grieving families would have been appropriate during Saturday's presidential radio address. Instead, the president droned on about the need for a campaign finance overhaul as the Gulf faced an Exxon Valdez-size calamity on steroids. America's future energy security also hangs in the balance.
As the St. Petersburg Times editorialized about the damage that could soon hit Florida's shores: "President Obama met U2's Bono in the Oval Office on Friday when he should have been headed to the Gulf Coast." The fragile marshes and shorelines of the Mississippi Delta could wait. Bono was in the house.
At this writing the undersea gusher resulting from the April 20 explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig still flows unabated, threatening an ecological and economic impact equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane.
Government scientists soon discovered the leak was five times larger than they had believed. The oil slick over the water's surface appeared to triple in size over just a two-day period. The oil rig is at the end of one branch of the Gulf Stream, and authorities fear a nightmare scenario in which the oil is carried into the Atlantic.
Other than mobilize the resources of the federal government, there's little the president personally could have done. But words are important, Obama has said, and pictures are worth thousands of words. We remember President Reagan's stirring words and the images of a nation comforted after the Challenger disaster. We will not remember the jokes at Saturday's correspondents dinner.
We also remember the harsh and largely unwarranted criticism of President Bush after Hurricane Katrina, although the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, both governed by Democrats, dropped the ball as first and primary responders.
During his presidential campaign, Obama vowed that the federal government would never again let the residents of the Gulf Coast down, a pointed rehash of criticism that the Bush administration had been slow to respond to Katrina. On this vow, the jury is still out.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says it could be 90 days before a relief well is completed to address the Gulf spill. Nearly two weeks after the oil rig exploded, Obama appears at the site of a disaster not yet under control. Heckuva job, Mr. President.
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