Obama and the Oil Spill

That's from the NRSCC...my view of the Obama Administrations take on this is that there are so many people in the upper ranks of his administration that are from academia, lawyers, they have spent no time actually doing anything substantive. They've spent way too much time THINKING about how government runs, but have never actually done anything. Thinking about how government works is well and good if you're writing a book, or teaching a class, but the actual mechanics of running a government have very little to do with theories of how government operates...

What the real problem here is that Mr. Obama lacks genuine leadership ability. He's never, ever had to show it before in his life...and so he dithers. It took him 90+ days to make the simple decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, that after his senior military advisers took 6 months, at his direction, to come up with an effective plan. Then, because his liberal base balks at any military action, even in his own words, on the "good war", he slit the difference and approved 2/3's of the troops deemed necessary by his advisers.

This is not a man accustomed to leading, he's accustomed to criticizing, to harping and sniping, but not to actually lead anything. The only thing this man does well, is campaign...eventually he (I genuinely hope) will come to understand that campaigning isn't leadership...it's salesmanship. Mr. Bush was a far from perfect president, but he at least took responsibility for the actions of his administration. Mr. Obama has only played politics and attempted to shift blame for everything that has occurred on his watch to his predecessor.

Because he's not been the leader that the left has hoped for, some Democrats have become vocal in their newly found opposition to him. James Carville has been the moost vocal lately, but it took a horrendous oil spill in the Gulf for him to do so. Chris Mathews...of the "shiver down my leg" fame, has started to as well.

“. . . this idiotic cerebral meritocracy has got to step aside and let the people who do things take over…”

We'll see in the coming months, especially after the November elections, how much more vocal those Democrats become. If this fall's elections are as disasterous as some predict, I suspect that Mr. Obama will face opposition in the 2012 Democratic primaries...much as James Earl Carter did by the late Ted Kennedy, that led to Mr. Carter's "retirement by the electorate." (Carter's phrase for his ass-whipping by Ronald Reagan in 1980)

The other message I get from this administration is that they are very happy that the oil spill occured and, if not "purposely" dragging their feet for cleanup and capping efforts, are doing so, so as to show how harmful offshore drilling is. That being said, the damaged well is in 5,000 feet of water, because drilling closer in shore has been prohibited for decades. There are much more easily accessible fields on the continental shelf, but Congress, under pressure of enviromental groups has forbidden development of these areas since the early 1970's. Additionally, if something were to occur in these shallower waters, capping the well would be immensely less difficult to arrange...but, by making this disaster worse, they are encouraging their economically damaging "green agenda."