‘WILL IT BE ENOUGH?’…. The Washington Post‘s Michael Shear considers the politics of the BP Oil Spill disaster, and the suddenly-ubiquitous media efforts to compare the Obama administration’s response to the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
Unlike Katrina, there have been no obvious failures of government, no images to compare to the Superdome or the flooded streets of St. Bernard Parish. And unlike Katrina, there is an easy target for blame in the current oil spill: the oil giant BP, which by law is the “responsible party” and must pay for all of the costs of the cleanup.
It is also the case that the oil rigs in the gulf today were not approved by Obama’s administration, and are the result of regulations and oversight that long predated Obama’s arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. […]
Officials point out that Coast Guard and Navy vessels were on the scene of the explosion almost immediately. By the time the scope of the possible devastation was clear, they say, more than 16 agencies were involved in helping the company and state officials try and plug the leak and confront the environmental damage.
Obama sent several Cabinet members and other top officials to the Gulf to coordinate the effort. His EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were supposed to attend Saturday’s White House Correspondent’s Association dinner but will stay in the gulf instead to attend to the incident.
Will it be enough?
Enough to prevent the oil spill from reaching the Gulf Coast? No. The Obama administration has some talented, competent folks, but they’re not superheroes.
Enough to respond to the bizarre political coverage of this disaster? It seems to me the first four paragraphs here answer the question in the fifth.
