Obama Heads to Gulf as Spill ‘Furor’ Shifts Toward White House
By Nicholas Johnston and John McCormick
June 4 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama showed he knew a thing or two about oil tar balls when he arrived last week on Fourchon Beach in Louisiana.
“Either the boom soaks stuff up, or manually you can pick up these tar balls as they’re coming ashore,” he told a group of reporters.
Spending about 15 minutes on a largely unsoiled beach is as close as Obama has come to the worst oil spill in U.S. history, one that is challenging his presidency as even some fellow Democrats complain that he has been too detached.
Today, he will return to the Gulf region for the third time in a month with a trip that will get him closer to destroyed wildlife and human distress.
“The president is well aware of the pain and suffering that this accident is causing,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters yesterday. “He will be there as often as the situation dictates.”
Gibbs said Obama will get an on-site update from Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen and other officials, as he did during a two-hour meeting on May 28, yet also talk to “non-elected individuals” who are “suffering firsthand” from the spill.
Still, in an interview, Gibbs said Obama doesn’t see the need for a theatrical display of concern.
“If the president thought getting mad and yelling would plug the hole, he’d do it on top of the White House,” he said. “He understands we’ll all be judged by our response and our recovery efforts, not on whether he’s been a good method actor.”
Ill-Placed Faith
Since the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, which BP Plc leased from Transocean Ltd., administration officials have increasingly criticized BP, saying their faith in the company to contain the oil flowing from a mile-deep well was ill-placed. The blast killed 11 and triggered leaks that a government panel said spew an estimated 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.
With the government acknowledging it may be August before London-based BP can stanch the spill, the situation has assumed a political dimension, too. For Obama, who took weeks to take full responsibility, the worsening crisis evokes the political peril former President George W. Bush faced after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Angry Americans
“The more the images of oil in marshlands, and dead birds washing ashore, the angrier the American people are going to get,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University in Houston. “Largely, it’s been directed toward BP. But as the weeks turn into months you can feel, almost on a daily basis, the public’s furor start heading toward the White House.”
While Cabinet members were dispatched to the Gulf, it took 12 days before the president made his first trip, flying to New Orleans May 2 and driving two hours in the rain to a Coast Guard station for a briefing. He took a helicopter tour, although weather kept him from seeing the oil slick.
Some Democrats worry whether the political fallout from a spill that threatens Florida’s beaches is containable.
Representative Charlie Melancon, whose Louisiana district spans the Mississippi Delta along the Gulf, faces a question: Could the administration have done more from the start?
“Probably yes,” he said. “Everybody trusted BP at first, and that probably includes the administration.”
Buck Stops Here
Obama, 48, says he isn’t relying on trust.
“I ultimately take responsibility for solving this crisis,” he said May 28 in Louisiana, after meeting with local, state and federal officials. “The buck stops with me.”
Tom Mann, an analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the administration failed early on in telling the public what it was doing.
“He believes in getting involved in the work and not in grandstanding,” Mann said. “To some extent, you’ve got to play this game. Talk is an important part of the job.”
Representative Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, defended Obama against criticism that he hasn’t exhibited the outrage that aides say he vents privately.
“He has expressed his frustration and anger,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Throwing a temper tantrum does not stop a leak.”
Obama told CNN’s Larry King yesterday his job is to solve the problem. “This isn’t about me and how angry I am,” he said.
Since ‘Day One’
Administration officials say there’s been a full response since “day one.” Still, Obama left for a North Carolina vacation three days after the explosion, and a stepped-up reaction didn’t become apparent until April 28, when there was a meeting of advisers and a call to the president aboard Air Force One.
Officials, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, were gathered in the Situation Room for an update when Coast Guard representatives told them about another breach in the well.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Gibbs were among those pulled from another meeting to join the group.
First Public Statement
The next day, Obama made his first public statement on the matter in the Rose Garden.
He wanted to travel to the area and contemplated canceling his May 1 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner appearance, advisers said, before scheduling the May 2 trip.
On May 27, he answered questions for the first time about the administration’s response at a news conference. He suspended oil exploration in two areas off Alaska; canceled pending lease sales in the Gulf as well as those proposed off Virginia; extended by six months a moratorium on deepwater drilling permits; and suspended operations at 33 exploratory wells being drilled in the Gulf.
Now, one senior Obama adviser said, the sole focus is stopping the leak.
“Our fundamental responsibility is to deal with that and the ongoing and multiplying effects,” said David Axelrod. “Ultimately, the president of the United States and the government is going to be judged on its ability to deal with that and not on stagecraft.”
To contact the reporters on this story: To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Johnston in Washington at njohnston3@bloomberg.net; To contact the reporter on this story: John McCormick in Washington at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: June 4, 2010 00:00 EDT |
