The Spill, The Scandal and the President

I finally took the time yesterday to read whatever I could about this problem. Like most Americans, I've watched the daily developments and nervously believed a solution was imminent. Maybe not optimal, but close at hand.

Multinational comglomerates the size of BP have such a large quiver of resources at their disposal that it seemed all it would take was the desire to act and it would get done.

So I believed.

Here's one fact that has convinced me the Gulf of Mexico is lost and that only the riskiest and most extreme measures (a nuclear device or other such detonation) will seal the leak:

The oil is rushing into the Gulf at between 20,000 and 70,000 psi.

Nobody's certain of the actual value, but that's the range usually cited. This is a very different problem than capping the wellheads in Kuwait after Sadaam retreated.

Anyone familiar with a waterjet cutter knows they run at 55,000+ psi and are so powerful they can cut 6" steel like butter.

Imagine raw oil with sediment and impurities (similiar to the garnet abrasive) streaming upward into the Gulf the same way the cutting nozzle projects downward into the water basin. All at one (1) mile below the surface.

There is no conventional solution that is going to stop the flow at those psi's.

None.

If you factor hurricanes and tropical storms into the mix it quickly becomes apparent that this is an international crisis without parallel in our time.

The lack of leadership from both the private and public sectors and the overall lack of accurate information on the potential long term ramifications is stunning.

Screw the talk about alternative fuels or who's to blame. We need action now. Right now.

In 1967 the the house estimated that Medicare would cost $9 Billion a year by 1990. The real number would turn out to be $67 Billion.

Every week or so the rate of the oil leak is revised upwards. What was once a spill has turned into a bad spill and now is being called a disaster. This seems consistent with the way most government estimates work.

Ironically it is almost as if we need an independent body with no power to spend money but with complete auditing power to get the public actual numbers.

I'm not sure what the one has to do with the other.

In one case, a power plant near Rockford is associated with elevated levels of tritium, and Obama, a freshman senator with almost no regulatory affiliation to nuclear power generation, attempts to pass a bill requiring more stringent notification of possible radiation leaks. Meanwhile, state and federal regulatory bodies that Obama has no oversight over take over the incident, fine the plant, and create more stringent notification requirements.

In the other, Obama, now elected president, is forced to decide whether to allow an allegedly expert company with severe conflicts of interest to coordinate and direct the mitigation of the largest environmental disaster the country has ever faced, a disaster they themselves caused, or instead create from whole cloth the federal capability to coordinate and direct that mitigation.

The only thing these two stories have in common is that there's no "good guy", "bad guy" template to lay over them, unless you want to try for "cheap and inevitably unsafe energy bad", "bicycles good".

In one case, after a radioactive byproduct of an Illinois power plant leaked into his constituents' well water, Senator Obama sponsored legislation to require nuclear power plants to report all abnormal leaks, not just ones they determined to rise to 'emergency' levels. The power company, Exelon, believed that the leak arose from "millions of gallons of water that had leaked from the plant years earlier but went unreported at the time" because the leak was not considered an 'emergency'. Faced with stiff opposition to the bill from industry and Republicans, Obama "removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators," and added "new wording sought by Exelon making it clear that state and local authorities would have no regulatory oversight of nuclear power plants." Exelon subsequently became a big Obama supporter, with exectives in the company becoming important fund-raisers, and direct corporate contributions of $227,000 to his Senate and Presidential campaigns. The full Senate never voted on the bill.

In the other case, Obama, now elected President, fails to follow through on reform of an agency he had decried while running for office, and instead continues to allow the foxes to mind the hen house, as detailed in the Rolling Stone article.

What do the two articles have to do with one another? As you say, there's no "good guy" or "bad guy" template to lay over them. But there is a tension, or ambiguity, between whether Obama is a populist reformer, or a conservative (in the original sense of the word) pragmatist. These two articles show how Obama is good at rattling his saber and mobilizing the base while on the campaign trail, while also being willing to make deals and accommodate industry interests in order to get things done (and perhaps not incidentally accrue contributions to his campaign coffers).

This is a far subtler picture than the socialist caricature painted by the right, and the Messiah caricature painted by the left. It is probably incorrect in places. But these two articles help me to put that picture together. I think Obama would've been comfortable with the moderate Republicans of twenty years ago, ideologically and temperamentally. Today's moderates seem to need to play more strongly to their left- or right-wing bases than they used to in order to get elected. I'm starting to see this playbook, and starting to see Obama (and Clinton before him) as being a master of that playbook.

I'm no student of politics or history, this is just the gestalt I see.

(EDIT: delete first sentence, edit last sentence of next-to-last paragraph)

You bring up a good point. There is a tendency on the part of figures of authority to pretend they have more power than they do. For Obama to take "responsibility" is total hubris. He's about as powerful to stop the spill as you or I.

The question he must ask himself is, "how can I act like I have power?"