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RLCMonday, July 5, 2010
Incredible Shrinking Presidency
In previous posts we wondered why the administration has been so slow to respond to the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, especially after the criticism this president heaped on President Bush for his dilatory response to Hurricane Katrina.
Well, it has turned out that there were two big reasons for refusing offers of help from the Dutch and both of them are disgraceful. The first is that the Dutch skimmers remove a tiny fraction less oil from the water than EPA regulations permit and the second is that the use of Dutch skimmers would have meant that unionized American crews would be excluded from the work, which circumstance offends the labor unions in whose pocket our president is ensconced.
Tens of thousands of Gulf coast residents are losing their livelihoods but, hey, the unions are happy.
There's much more in the article at the link to cause you to despair of the competence and intelligence of the people in the White House who seek to assure us that they've been on top of this disaster from day one.
Democratic pollster Pat Caddell said recently that the administration has shown so much incompetence in their handling of the oil clean-up that it'll be a long time before anyone has any confidence in the government's ability to manage a crisis.
Indeed, with every passing day both the confidence Americans have in government's ability to solve problems and the stature of President Obama diminish apace. Mr. Obama has become the political embodiment of the Incredible Shrinking Man, and nothing he says about the spill means anything to anyone any more. Maybe it's time for him to retreat to the links for another round of golf and just let the governors of the affected states handle the clean-up.
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