Last night, President Obama addressed the country from the Oval Office to talk about the BP oil spill in the Gulf (the transcript is here, courtesy of the WSJ). If you didn’t see it, here’s the video:
It was, simply put, awful. One of the biggest concerns I had was Obama’s appointment of Ray Mabus to the new oil spill recovery czar. First, we have enough freakin’ czars as it is. Second, does anyone here recognize the name Ray Mabus? It’s because he’s the Secretary of the Navy. Did Obama never stop to think that Mabus already has a lot on his plate, with running the entire Navy and all, and that being the oil spill recovery czar might be a little too much?
And then there was the rhetoric. Dear God, the rhetoric. Obama is comparing this oil spill to everything he can think of. Recently it was 9/11. Last night it was World War II (which Ed Morrissey handily destroyed). It all basically comes down to the fact that Obama is still campaigning. This was a stump speech designed to win voters over. He tried to sound tough — remember, he’s President Kick Ass now — and failed miserably. There were lots of macho-sounding words and terms. He said he would “fight” the spill. He’s got a “battle plan”. He’s going to make BP pay. It came across as miserably fake, because a wimpy kid can never sound like a tough guy just by trying to talk tough.
Then there were of course the lies. For example, Obama claimed that his administration has been all over this from day one. Does this include, I wonder, the taxpayer-funded white water rafting trip in the early days of the spill? How about Obama’s many games of golf? And fundraisers? And photo ops? And hobnobbing with celebrities and athletes at the White House? And parties? He’s spent almost no time actually dealing with the oil spill. There has been no urgency whatsoever from the White House in responding to this crisis, but Obama’s in campaign mode now. This is his version of leadership, after all: pretty speeches, staged photo ops, and absolutely nothing substantial to back it up whatsoever. This oil spill has been exactly the same. He tries desperately to look like he’s done something without actually doing anything. He’s got a lot of golf to play, remember? He’s got better things to do as president than govern. He wants to get all of the credit without doing any of the work.
There was also, as with all Obama speeches, the prerequisite finger-pointing. He says he’s going to find out why this happened and it won’t ever happen again. There needs to be better regulations and safety standards? I guess this explains why, before the oil spill, his administration exempted BP’s gulf drilling from an environmental impact study. When do you know Obama is lying? When his lips are moving. This is the top recipient of donations from BP, after all, and he was rubber-stamping their drilling operations, which were clearly unsafe. And now, he wants to blame everyone else but himself. He complains about oil companies showering regulations with gifts in order to receive industry favors… but that’s been happening under his watch. Top recipient of BP donations, remember?
He ended by pushing for a bill that he’s been pushing for since his first day in office. We have a gigantic oil spill… hey, look, WIND TURBINES! The phrase “never let a crisis go to waste” is drifting into my mind. How convenient for Obama! We have a legitimate crisis now, and he’s got something to use as leverage to accomplish what he wants. And in his mind, he also gets to come across as a strong, capable leader. If he had handled this well, this crisis could have been a lifesaver for his presidency. And after all, to politicians like Obama, every crisis is there to be manipulated. He’s just too lazy to realize that he’s got to put the golf clubs away and actually at least appear to be doing some kind of work. Phony JFK-ish rhetoric doesn’t float the boat if you don’t have the goods to back it up. He talked last night about how he was going to give it to BP hard — but he only allotted a whopping 20 minutes today with BP execs. Last night he talked about wind turbines and about how he was all over this from day one, but he ended up proving the exact opposite. He’s out of his league. He’s running on empty. And this speech showed it. As Erick Erickson put it,
Whatever the reason, Barack Obama gave the most depressing Oval Office speech since Jimmy Carter’s malaise speech. He didn’t just embrace defeat, he wore it on his suit as a substitute for an argyle sweater. He tried to sound upbeat in the way a cop in a movie might sound when his partner lay mortally wounded and the cop needs to get the partner’s wife to the hospital without letting her know her husband is dying. It was a false optimism with Barack Obama distracting Americans in a game of three card monte.
During the campaign, Obama used his experience of running his campaign as a qualification for the presidency. And this speech showed, as if we didn’t all already know, that campaigning is all he knows how to do. Obama is nothing more than an empty suit, someone with a lot of vapid rhetoric and shallow ideas, who cannot handle the pressures and responsibilities of the presidency at all. He thought one of his speeches, famous for their soaring rhetoric, would save him. And all it did was make him look even more amateurish, inexperienced, and incapable.
Even Olby and Matthews weren’t impressed, and that says a lot.
Had Obama ever worked at a low-wage job, like McDonald’s or Starbucks, he would realise that he was getting paid to get stuff done – burgers in bags, macchiatos in cups, and that’s it. You’re paid to be nice to people when you inadvertently piss them off, but the bulk of the job is in getting stuff done. Had Obama’s lawyering experience taken him to drafting contracts or writing patents, he would know that he was getting paid to ensure that, at the end of the day, his client had a patent – not that his client felt good about the company’s technology profile, but an actual patent.
There’s a lot wrong with Obama, and I don’t think his presidency can be fixed, but it would be enormously helped by, say, spending six weeks flipping burgers.
He wants to get all of the credit without doing any of the work.
Three things you learn from working in an office environment, and not for a terribly long time either…although it does take some repeated exposure, and I would expect forty-somethings to be more hip to it than the average twenty-something. Holy Man’s approval ratings do seem to reflect this generational disparity (also, He is admired with statistical significance among those who don’t work and aren’t going to work). The three things are:
1. There’s one of this type in every single office. He has the last word on everything but owns no mistakes. He doesn’t do a lick of real work, but don’t say that to his face because when he’s in his “meetings” he thinks he’s “working” very hard. His favorite computer application is the e-mail client. Nobody can complete the sentence “Thank God he’s around, we never would have gotten (blank) done if he wasn’t here.”
2. If he is the boss, this office is as successful and influential as it is ever going to be (until there’s a new boss). Morale deteriorates under bosses like this, because everybody who is under him understands there’s a constant search for scapegoats. They know they’re evolving into do-nothing bureaucrats, because the only assured method available to the staffer who wants to stay out of trouble is…nothing. Progress is a sure-fire way to eventually become the bad guy, nobody will get in trouble for being idle. So having a zero net effect is encouraged; providing a good outcome, different from the status quo, is discouraged.
3. Whether he is the boss or not, there is an inversely proportional relationship between this person’s popularity, and the amount of work that has to be done. Ironically, if we’re all so busy we don’t even care who gets the credit, this fellow is really just in the way. If we’re bored, we could fall off the face of the earth and nobody would notice & we know it — getting into fights on the rare occasion something important has to be done over who “gets to” include that on their status reports — this guy becomes much more popular, and we all want to be on his “team.” If you’re at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan and the metal door of the amphibious assault craft is about to come down, you don’t want him in the same universe.
Obama is the hero of people who never get any goddamn work done. He is fulfilling His designated role wonderfully. It is a privilege to exist in His time, a real learning experience. He is an archetype.
I R A Darth Aggie says: He wants to get all of the credit without doing any of the work.
Seemingly, that’s the story of his life…
Obama wants to bring criminal charges against BP for allowing this disaster to happen.
Does this mean that if a president announces an economic stimulus plan but unemployment goes up, that the president should face criminal charges?
If not, please explain the difference to me.
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